While the project is interesting from a technical perspective, there are some serious issues. The main implementation has a vague, non-standard licence, but this is not overly problematic as alternative implementations can simply be used instead. A bigger problem with Reticulum is that it does not appear to offer robust protection against abuse. Messages are protected by cryptography, but there are many other ways to render a network unusable, which will inevitably happen on a larger scale.
Sargos 4 hours ago [-]
https://ratspeak.org/ seems like a modern fork of Reticulum built in Rust and with a fairly active community
wateralien 11 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunate name for the project.
Root_Access 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
QwenGlazer9000 4 hours ago [-]
I had a lot of hope for reticulum, but it's a one man project with a near burned out maintainer, taking on an absolutely monstrous task.
I'm now cautiously optimistic. This or something similar is likely the long term future of mesh networks, but in the short to medium term, meshcore is the way to go.
Root_Access 3 hours ago [-]
The protocol itself is more mature than the maintainer situation suggests. I built a complete independent implementation from the public spec in a few sessions. If one person can do that without touching the reference codebase, the foundation is solid. The risk is to Mark's implementation, not to Reticulum as a protocol.
kangaroozach 2 hours ago [-]
Why are there not more developers? Is ratspeak where they all prefer to be?
Also reticulum and crypto seem like they go together. Non-http crypto transactions?
What about entirely-non-http blockchains?
A new bitcoin that is completely off the internet as we know it??
Panda_ 55 minutes ago [-]
Mark accepts outside contributions over LXMF using git patches. The main communication method is over Reticulum Relay Chat using clients like NomadNet (made by Mark, unintuitive but works well) which is basically IRC and is purely sending messages to everyone in that channel at that time and is centralised around self hosted servers.
ddrdrck_ 56 minutes ago [-]
What would be the benefit of not using tcp or http ? It is used only as a way to transport binary data.
Gigachad 8 hours ago [-]
> Reticulum does not use source addresses. No packets transmitted include information about the address, place, machine or person they originated from.
Sure, but if it’s anything like MeshCore, a few observer nodes will be able to see which repeaters the message first entered the network from and from that know roughly where it was located.
Panda_ 2 hours ago [-]
Reticulum packets include a hop count of how many nodes it’s been through (to prevent packets looping indefinitely) and the destination address. Two way links use tables on each node to reverse the route back to the origin and don’t use origin addresses.
The worst part privacy wise could be the announce packets which include a hop count and the address for the origin so if you had enough interfaces you could roughly say where a node is on a network graph (geo locating that is an entire other problem)
Privacy also depends on what interfaces you communicate over, eg TCP reveals IP addresses to the nodes you directly connect to (combine with hop counts to see if a packet definitely originated from that node), LoRa gives an idea of how close it might be because of its range limits and the fact radio emissions can be located.
tehlike 7 hours ago [-]
reticulum don't just propagate over lora. IT can practically propagate over anything it supports (network, lora, bluetooth, etc).
405nm 7 hours ago [-]
it isn’t
FreezingKeeper 4 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately whenever I see the name, I am always reminded of part of the anatomy
Was also the name of the internet in Neal Stephenson's Anathem.
SilverSlash 1 hours ago [-]
Haha I immediately looked for this comment and wondered if the name was inspired by Anathem.
ashton314 8 hours ago [-]
Yes it is.
With the Artificial Inanity systems and the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies (ROBE) beginning to spew tremendous amounts of crap (a technical term) onto the Ret, things are getting tricky for us ITA.
KneeAwn 5 hours ago [-]
One of my favorite books that I have yet to convince any of my friends to read. So many cool ideas explored.
clavicle1009 3 hours ago [-]
Have you guys heard of Netbird? It's exactly what I was looking for as a Tailscale alternative.
lilOnion 1 hours ago [-]
How is that related?
sudo_cowsay 24 minutes ago [-]
Bros sponsored lol. Nah but good recommendation, looked it up and it seems pretty interesting
donpdonp 8 hours ago [-]
it'd be nice to see a comparison to rayfish.xyz
neilalexander 58 seconds ago [-]
Different animal altogether.
Rayfish, Tailscale, ZeroTier, Netbird etc are a different category of tool, designed to facilitate connectivity between you and your own pool of machines. They don't generally do much in the way of "routing" as it were, but rather they orchestrate VPN tunnels on top of another routed network (like the internet).
Reticulum would be better compared to Yggdrasil, cjdns etc as routing schemes for larger networks or true meshes, which can work independently of and have no dependency upon the internet.
7 hours ago [-]
highway900 6 hours ago [-]
Maybe a better comparison is iroh.computer
maeln 2 hours ago [-]
Iroh is a framework that use QUIC to help create p2p software. It is not a mesh network.
therein 7 hours ago [-]
It has nothing to do with that, like at all.
knowaveragejoe 6 hours ago [-]
Not in a technical sense, no. But at a high level, in spirit, I can see some overlap.
neilalexander 23 seconds ago [-]
In the same way that you can hack apart a loaf of bread with a spoon, yes, but they are very different things with different goals.
armitron 6 hours ago [-]
No published specification, single Python implementation. Shame, as this solves a problem that badly needs to be solved well.
Panda_ 3 hours ago [-]
The author of Reticulum's take is that the implementation is the specification, so if another implementation works with the standard Python one and implements enough of it's features then it implements Reticulum.
I suppose it means it's easier to develop the protocol only having to update one Python codebase but it does mean other implementations are kinda in a state where there isn't anything to properly verify they work.
There's also a issue with quite a few vibe coded implementations that don't actually properly work filling the space.
Root_Access 3 hours ago [-]
There is a published spec, I built a clean-room implementation from it. And mine makes at least two Python implementations. The protocol itself is solid, the spec just isn't marketed.
mfru 3 hours ago [-]
Where is the spec?
childintime 8 hours ago [-]
The resistance is out there somewhere?
childintime 4 hours ago [-]
People don't seem to get this was a genuine question. What is a network without people using it? Anyone here on reticulum?
The internet may be ripe for disruption, as it has been domesticated for corporate use. It is no longer ours. Browsers have become an operating system unto themselves. Something much simpler would work also. Corporate bloat is continuing to pile up, while markdown evolves to do everything we want.
Panda_ 3 hours ago [-]
People do use it but it's definitely a small community. It has the NomadNet Page protocol which is basically small no client side script webpages (forms and links only) in a fairly bandwidth efficient form.
Garlef 4 hours ago [-]
> Anyone here on reticulum?
Is that even the right question?
I only read the intro message but the framing I arrived/guessed at was:
"open, distributed alternative to tailscale"
So I think my first usecase would be to use this instead of tailscale to connect to my Pi?
Rendered at 10:01:30 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I'm now cautiously optimistic. This or something similar is likely the long term future of mesh networks, but in the short to medium term, meshcore is the way to go.
Also reticulum and crypto seem like they go together. Non-http crypto transactions?
What about entirely-non-http blockchains?
A new bitcoin that is completely off the internet as we know it??
Sure, but if it’s anything like MeshCore, a few observer nodes will be able to see which repeaters the message first entered the network from and from that know roughly where it was located.
The worst part privacy wise could be the announce packets which include a hop count and the address for the origin so if you had enough interfaces you could roughly say where a node is on a network graph (geo locating that is an entire other problem)
Privacy also depends on what interfaces you communicate over, eg TCP reveals IP addresses to the nodes you directly connect to (combine with hop counts to see if a packet definitely originated from that node), LoRa gives an idea of how close it might be because of its range limits and the fact radio emissions can be located.
personally i find it a beautiful match
With the Artificial Inanity systems and the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies (ROBE) beginning to spew tremendous amounts of crap (a technical term) onto the Ret, things are getting tricky for us ITA.
Rayfish, Tailscale, ZeroTier, Netbird etc are a different category of tool, designed to facilitate connectivity between you and your own pool of machines. They don't generally do much in the way of "routing" as it were, but rather they orchestrate VPN tunnels on top of another routed network (like the internet).
Reticulum would be better compared to Yggdrasil, cjdns etc as routing schemes for larger networks or true meshes, which can work independently of and have no dependency upon the internet.
I suppose it means it's easier to develop the protocol only having to update one Python codebase but it does mean other implementations are kinda in a state where there isn't anything to properly verify they work.
There's also a issue with quite a few vibe coded implementations that don't actually properly work filling the space.
The internet may be ripe for disruption, as it has been domesticated for corporate use. It is no longer ours. Browsers have become an operating system unto themselves. Something much simpler would work also. Corporate bloat is continuing to pile up, while markdown evolves to do everything we want.
Is that even the right question?
I only read the intro message but the framing I arrived/guessed at was:
"open, distributed alternative to tailscale"
So I think my first usecase would be to use this instead of tailscale to connect to my Pi?