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Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

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Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#81

Post by [deleted] »

BSDobelix wrote: post #40
mytailorisrich wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lora, especially on regulated bands that are the most used ones, is designed for very small, very infrequent messages. It isn't suited for real-time chat (nevermind secure) and so I think you can't really make it work while respecting transmission regulations. There are lora modules that work on the 2.4GHz ISM band but then you probably need to consider whether Bluetooth is not a simpler choice if range is not the no…

>It isn't suited for real-time chat (nevermind secure) It is encrypted on private channels and direct messages. >and so I think you can't really make it work while respecting transmission regulations. I don't know from where your information's are from, but for sure not from reality. Voice encryption/scramble on Amateur-Band's is not allowed, everything else is ok.

[deleted]

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#82

Post by the__alchemist »

snickerer wrote: post #77
the__alchemist wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, the Rust impl is Std only, so it doesn't solve 1

I took a deeper dive in Reticulum-rs. It is std. It implements 20% of Reticulum functionality. And it has 2 major protocol incompatibilities (like a different size for the MTU / Maximum Transfer Unit). It looks like a quick vibe coded hack to implement a subset, tailored only for Beechat's own devices. If someone would want to implement a full no_std Reticulum lib, they would need to start from scratch.

My surprise level at your finding is low. I regularly start from scratch in embedded rust for precisely this scenario. A typical response is "Why not use [reticulum-rs] etc.". Your elegant description could be described with the "But we have McDonald's at home" meme.

There are many cases where a library will be posted online, be mentioned in a blog post, and demonstrated in a demonstration workflow. If you try to use it for practical means, it becomes immediately clear it is "totaled" or easier to start over than fix or adapt it.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#83

Post by jkingsman »

agent86 wrote: post #28
agravier wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what mesh stuff do you recommend for the uninitiated?

In the LoRA/radio device sense, Meshtastic[1] is probably the easiest to get started with. It's the biggest player in the space, has devices that come pre-installed and configured, the most likely chance of making contact with someone else, etc. MeshCore[2] is the other major player. It's newer and tends to have been adopted by communities that have run into issues with large Meshtastic networks. If you meant PC-base…

Big fan of MeshCore; been using it recently and it Just Works. Especially where I am in the USA Pacific Northwest, the mesh is always hopping with conversation. I have run into delivery issues a single digit number of times over hundreds of messages.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#85

Post by ogurechny »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #79
pona-a wrote: post #32

Surprised to see nobody mentioned Yggdrasil [0]. It's a routing protocol with cryptographic, non-topologic addresses, which could be used on top of TCP/IP or any alternative stack, like LoRA. I've been using it as a Tailscale replacement for a few weeks, including hosting game servers, with about equivalent latency, and it seemed pretty stable. How does Reticulum differ? [0] https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/

Yggdrasil is great. It's high-performance, uses regular IPv6 TCP/UDP, and automatically forms one big, open network, where routes are available. Reticulum enables the creation of many different smaller networks, optimized for high-latency, low-bandwidth links (LoRa, packet radio). It uses its own addressing and transport system, with applications which are specifically made and optimized for it. Both are mesh network…

This is something a clueless TV marketer would say, I suppose.

Both tools can be used to both build private networks managed by a single entity, and to connect to global shared volunteer-run network.

Reticulum is not a general purpose protocol-agnostic data transfer network into which you can plug anything. Also, when you want any kind of serious bandwidth over long distance radio, you have to meet with agencies managing national frequency plans, and they won't lease you anything for free.

Yggdrasil is hardly an “alternative to Internet” as long as it runs on top of Internet links. Moreover, when public Yggdrasil network becomes big enough (assuming that it still runs on volunteer public nodes, just many more of them), the core of the network will have to form a backbone with links shaped by user concentration and user traffic flows, just like network of physical cables used by providers is shaped by demand, concentration of computing resources, geographical features, and so on. Someone will probably have to collect funds to pay for that. Or some new smart multipath routing with dynamic load balancing will be invented.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#86

Post by ronsor »

throw7 wrote: post #71

Doesn't look like a free software license. No purposeful harm to humans and no AI usage direct or indirect.

I dislike these "non-free" licenses because the actors they purport to stop aren't going to care (why would a terrorist cell care about licenses? if AI training is fair use, then why would AI companies care about licenses?). All it does is create obstacles for legitimate people.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#87

Post by Evanito »

SuperMouse wrote: post #20

I've never seen a bigger network with Reticulum in the wild. And I'm deep into Mesh stuff with several local communities. One of the main reasons of the communities not jumping onto the ship was that it's mostly a one-man-project and most of its Git changes are "Update" "Better Version" "Update" "Cleanup" which makes it basically impossible to track changes.

> I've never seen a bigger network with Reticulum in the wild.

Bigger than.. what?

> One of the main reasons of the communities not jumping onto the ship was that it's mostly a one-man-pr...

Reticulum does not support group chats. Which is a far more realistic explanation than suggesting the average user cares what the commit messages are.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#88

Post by Evanito »

blacklion wrote: post #84

Does anybody know how good routing in this Project protected from malicious actors, or simply badly configured nodes? As far as I know, most mesh routing protocols is very sensitive to rogue nodes, even if it is misconfiguration and not malicious intent...

> Does anybody know how good routing in this Project protected from malicious actors, or simply badly configured nodes?

Reticulum requires you to manually define your uplinks, including remote servers. If this remote server is blackholing your traffic, you are SOL.

If you define multiple remote servers, then you may be in luck iff your destination is advertising its route on a path (chain of servers) that has no such hostile nodes.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#89

Post by selimthegrim »

beala wrote: post #78
BSDobelix wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It isn't suited for real-time chat (nevermind secure) It is encrypted on private channels and direct messages. >and so I think you can't really make it work while respecting transmission regulations. I don't know from where your information's are from, but for sure not from reality. Voice encryption/scramble on Amateur-Band's is not allowed, everything else is ok.

> Voice encryption/scramble on Amateur-Band's is not allowed, everything else is ok. It seems like you're saying voice encryption is not permitted, but data encryption is? This is not true in the US. Any encoding used for the purpose of "obscuring meaning" is not permitted on amateur frequencies. Even using code phrases like "the eagle has landed" is arguably not allowed. There are some narrow exceptions for things l…

So numbers stations fall under as otherwise provided?

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#90

Post by latchkey »

agent86 wrote: post #25
SuperMouse wrote: post #20

I've never seen a bigger network with Reticulum in the wild. And I'm deep into Mesh stuff with several local communities. One of the main reasons of the communities not jumping onto the ship was that it's mostly a one-man-project and most of its Git changes are "Update" "Better Version" "Update" "Cleanup" which makes it basically impossible to track changes.

And, as of 3 weeks ago, the one man is "stepping back from all public-facing interaction with this project".[1] Further, "Occasional updates may appear at unpredictable intervals, but there will be no support, no responses to issues, no discussions, and no community management in this or any other public venue." Nothing salacious here - just another one man open source project with a burnt out maintainer :(. [1] - ht…

To be fair, satoshi stepped back too.
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