Reticulum is the cryptography-based networking stack for wide-area networks built on readily available hardware. It can operate even with very high latency and extremely low bandwidth. Reticulum allows you to build wide-area networks with off-the-shelf tools, and offers end-to-end encryption and connectivity, initiator anonymity, autoconfiguring cryptographically backed multi-hop transport, efficient addressing, unforgeable delivery acknowledgements and more.
The vision of Reticulum is to allow anyone to be their own network operator, and to make it cheap and easy to cover vast areas with a myriad of independent, interconnectable and autonomous networks. Reticulum **is not***one network*, it **is a tool** for building *thousands of networks*. Networks without kill-switches, surveillance, censorship and control. Networks that can freely interoperate, associate and disassociate with each other, and require no central oversight. Networks for human beings. *Networks for the people*.
Reticulum is a complete networking stack, and does not need IP or higher layers, although it is easy to use IP (with TCP or UDP) as the underlying carrier for Reticulum. It is therefore trivial to tunnel Reticulum over the Internet or private IP networks.
Having no dependencies on traditional networking stacks free up overhead that has been utilised to implement a networking stack built directly on cryptographic principles, allowing resilience and stable functionality in open and trustless networks.
Over practically any medium that can support at least a half-duplex channel with 500 bits per second throughput, and an MTU of 500 bytes. Data radios, modems, LoRa radios, serial lines, AX.25 TNCs, amateur radio digital modes, ad-hoc WiFi, free-space optical links and similar systems are all examples of the types of interfaces Reticulum was designed for.
An open-source LoRa-based interface called [RNode](https://unsigned.io/projects/rnode/) has been designed specifically for use with Reticulum. It is possible to build yourself, or it can be purchased as a complete transceiver that just needs a USB connection to the host.
Reticulum can also be encapsulated over existing IP networks, so there's nothing stopping you from using it over wired ethernet or your local WiFi network, where it'll work just as well. In fact, one of the strengths of Reticulum is how easily it allows you to connect different mediums into a self-configuring, resilient and encrypted mesh.
As an example, it's possible to set up a Raspberry Pi connected to both a LoRa radio, a packet radio TNC and a WiFi network. Once the interfaces are configured, Reticulum will take care of the rest, and any device on the WiFi network can communicate with nodes on the LoRa and packet radio sides of the network, and vice versa.
The best way to get started with the Reticulum Network Stack depends on what
you want to do. For full details and examples, have a look at the [Getting Started Fast](https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/gettingstartedfast.html) section of the [Reticulum Manual](https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/).
To simply install Reticulum and related utilities on your system, the easiest way is via pip:
```bash
pip3 install rns
```
You can then start any program that uses Reticulum, or start Reticulum as a system service with [the rnsd utility](https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/using.html#the-rnsd-utility).
When first started, Reticulum will create a default configuration file, providing basic connectivity to other Reticulum peers. The default config file contains examples for using Reticulum with LoRa transceivers (specifically [RNode](https://unsigned.io/projects/rnode/)), packet radio TNCs/modems, TCP and UDP.
You can use the examples in the config file to expand communication over many mediums such as packet radio or LoRa (with [RNode](https://unsigned.io/projects/rnode/)), serial ports, or over fast IP links and the Internet using the UDP and TCP interfaces. For more detailed examples, take a look at the [Supported Interfaces](https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/interfaces.html) section of the [Reticulum Manual](https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/).
Reticulum includes a range of useful utilities for managing your networks, viewing status and information, and other tasks. You can read more about these programs in the [Included Utility Programs](https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/using.html#included-utility-programs) section of the [Reticulum Manual](https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/).
Reticulum should currently be considered beta software. All core protocol features are implemented and functioning, but additions will probably occur as real-world use is explored. There will be bugs. The API and wire-format can be considered relatively stable at the moment, but could change if warranted.
Reticulum implements a range of generalised interface types that covers most of the communications hardware that Reticulum can run over. If your hardware is not supported, it's relatively simple to implement an interface class. I will gratefully accept pull requests for custom interfaces if they are generally useful.
If you just want to get started experimenting without building any physical networks, you are welcome to join the Unsigned.io RNS Testnet. The testnet is just that, an informal network for testing and experimenting. It will be up most of the time, and anyone can join, but it also means that there's no guarantees for service availability.
The testnet runs the very latest version of Reticulum (often even a short while before it is publicly released). Sometimes experimental versions of Reticulum might be deployed to nodes on the testnet, which means strange behaviour might occur. If none of that scares you, you can join the testnet via eihter TCP or I2P. Just add one of the following interfaces to your Reticulum configuration file:
Are certain features in the development roadmap are important to you or your organisation? Make them a reality quickly by sponsoring their implementation.
Reticulum is relatively young software, and should be considered as such. While it has been built with cryptography best-practices very foremost in mind, it _has not_ been externally security audited, and there could very well be privacy-breaking bugs. If you want to help out, or help sponsor an audit, please do get in touch.
