LinuxinaBIt

Some FAQs for those who are interested in the Reticulum Network Stack:

https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/wiki/Frequently-Asked...

It covers questions like:

- How is Reticulum different from Insert System Here?

- What's the legality of the system?

- What's to stop someone from flooding the network?

And many others.

Yeah, exactly what each type of node does gets a bit into the weeds where even I don't really know. You can ask in the Github Forum (https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/discussions) or Matrix Room (https://matrix.to/#/#reticulum:matrix.org) if you need more detailed information :)

Sure, in some cases, when the network has fewer announces to deal with, the 2% limit has less effect, the best way Reticulum can deal with this is with a network made out of more specialized node types connecting the lower speed links (http://reticulum.network/manual/interfaces.html#interfaces-m...)

However when the network (and each node) is receiving enough announces to saturate that 2% chunk of most smaller links, those interfaces prioritize announces with less hops, and there is a queue, meaning it takes that interface longer to transport announces coming from further away. This makes it much more likely that nodes will form routes over a faster but longer path.

Sideband, another LXMF/Reticulum client, has an IOS beta here: https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/discussions/307 (currently the TestFlight link is https://testflight.apple.com/join/ftgW9n0Z but that might change in the future).

Of course it has issues running the in the background, but there are possible solutions to this, like having Reticulum run entirely on an RNode, and it is being worked on somewhat actively.

It’s hard to compare things that are so different like that, but I will try.

Scuttlebutt: Reticulum is a network stack for routing data in real time, not a decentralized social network.

Nostr: See Scuttlebutt

IPFS: Reticulum transfers data, it does not store it (though some protocols that work over Reticulum like LXMF optionally have functionality that allows for temporary message storage)

Yggdrasil is the closest analog to Reticulum you mentioned, but unfortunately from a cursory search I could not find any details about how it works. I can see that it currently works only over IPv6 (with IPv4 tunnels of some kind), unlike Reticulum which works over anything.

I suggest at least reading http://reticulum.network/manual/understanding.html to see how Reticulum works, if you are interested.

RNode is a transceiver program installed on a LoRa board to allow Sideband, Meshtastic, etc. to connect to a Reticulum network over LoRa.

I think you’re looking for the C++ implementation of Reticulum made specifically for microcontrollers instead: https://github.com/attermann/microReticulum_Firmware https://github.com/attermann/microReticulum

Reticulum uses absolutely no blockchain. It uses a fairly novel routing strategy with something called announces.

Read this page to learn more about it: https://reticulum.network/manual/understanding.html

TL;DR it only flood routes packets that tell the network the location of a node; each node stores the “next hop” to get to every other node on the network. Everything else is routed along a single path determined by those “next hops.”

I like the way you’re thinking but it doesn’t necessarily work like that in practice. Why? Because of how announce queues work, each interface has its own queue, and announces are limited very specifically to 2% of a channel’s bandwidth.

This means that announces are much more likely to be transferred over the faster medium first, resulting in paths that are on average the most reasonable balance between speed and distance.

If that doesn’t make sense at first, I get it. I find trying to visualize how it works really helps. Reticulum is conceptually so different from anything else out there that it takes a while to understand.

See http://reticulum.network/manual/understanding.html#the-annou... for more details.