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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

#91
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No, numbers stations are not permitted on amateur frequencies in the US. There are some notable cases of foreign governments setting these up and interfering with amateur allocations [1], but there's not much the FCC can do about that.

[1] https://www.arrl.org/news/russian-buzzer-disappears-chinese-...

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#92
post #65
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/

I currently use Headscale, can you give some more details on how you use this to the same effect as Tailscale / Headscale?

Yggdrasil is a more generic overlay. It can run over unconfigured Ethernet links, auto-discover other nodes on your local network, or punch through firewalls if you configure any public peers. You can setup a private network by only declaring your private peers. I think each device gets an entire subnet, so you might be able to expose multiple services on multiple IPs, though I'm not sure about that.

My use-case was sharing things like game servers and websites with friends—which we previously did by sharing each other's machines/servers via Tailscale—and accessing my homelab remotely. For the first case, the public Yggdrasil network was much better than a mesh VPN like Tailscale: I don't have to manage invites or accounts—everyone who knows the address can just connect.

For the second case, assuming addresses are discoverable (since 128 bits would make them quite hard to enumerate), I think a firewall gating by incoming IP will take care of that (since your IP is just a hash of your public key), though for now I've kept most sensitive ports unbound from it. I hadn't yet tried anything like Tailscale bridging (exposing a LAN address without configuring the client on the endpoint), but I'll try once I have a bit more free time.

Tailscale is a nice abstraction on Wireguard, but Yggdrasil feels less like a solution to your specific infra problems and more like a coherent vision of how the internet ought to be. You can just rely on IPs as identities, link-layer encryption with Noise Protocol, and out-of-box hole punching, with relatively low latency (though I haven't tested the speed). It's the same feeling of awe as when I first saw how easy it is to host Onion Services, only not hampered by the abysmal speeds.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#93

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...

With current size of the network, it's probably managed by sending messages to operators chat “Hey, IP a.b.c.d is doing that again”.

Remember that Fido and Usenet relied on independent server admins voluntary enforcing the rules for global groups (and allowed the alternative sister hierarchies or local appendices with different rules). It is possible to give more power to local decision maker, and share the global ideas.

Link establishment mentions validation of the circle by the intermediate hops. I suppose that someone who is sending a lot of packets without participation from the other side can be put into exponentially worse and worse queues. Or maybe not. There's a lot of things to test.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#94

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...

With current size of the network, it's probably managed by sending messages to operators chat “Hey, IP a.b.c.d is doing that again”. Remember that Fido and Usenet relied on independent server admins voluntary enforcing the rules for global groups (and allowed the alternative sister hierarchies or local appendices with different rules). It is possible to give more power to local decision maker, and share the global id…

I mean, this is not a solution if we want winder adoption.

I was FIDONet node (and even hub) sysop, and I remember well, that FIDO was rigid hierarchical structure — you have your NC, and NC can discommunicate any node in his network. Yes, it was elected position, but after elections it was mostly dictatorship.

It doesn't seems like «Fully self-configuring multi-hop routing over heterogeneous carriers» advertised by this project, rather opposite.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#95
post #88

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…

So, looks like no «Fully self-configuring multi-hop routing over heterogeneous carriers».

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mana…

Yggdrasil can peer over the internet, but that's just convenience. In a global internet blackout, you obviously wouldn't have a global Yggdrasil network in a week, month or year, but you can have a reasonable regional network in that time. Every user is a node and can expand the network to new people. It's a P2P mesh, not volunteer-run. As regional networks start to peer to each other, it forms one big network automatically. You need cables and hardware, but that's not a problem when everyone has the incentive of wanting to use it.

You could build a public network over Reticulum, but why deal with the inconveniences of the protocol just to run it over high-bandwidth? It's specifically optimized for very low-bandwidth transports, so that you can cover long distances with just a small group of participants.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#97

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.

So what mesh stuff do you recommend for the uninitiated?

If you're talking radio mesh, then MeshCore and Meshtastic. Meshcore does chat much better than Meshtastic.

Meshtastic is good if you're in a remote location, and you want to connect a bunch of sensors and trackers.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#98
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yea, because he was dying.

Re: Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack

#99
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The reticulum dev have been trying to quit for years and have been quite open about his own personal struggles. More recently: - v1.0.0 was supposed to be the time his involvement is over [0] - 6 months later [1] > This is not a temporary break. It's not "see you after some rest", but a recognition that the current model is fundamentally incompatible with my life, my health, and my reality. - But he pushed 3 releases…

Just found this post; and I see Liam Cottle _just_ did a talk at FOSDEM26 about the situation and the future:

https://fosdem.org/2026/events/attachments/9NCWUR-reticulum_...

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