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Reticulum Network Stack <img align="right" src="https://static.pepy.tech/personalized-badge/rns?period=month&units=internationalsystem&leftcolor=grey&rightcolor=blue&lefttext=Installs/month" style="padding-left:10px"/><a href="https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/actions/workflows/build.yml"><img align="right" src="https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/actions/workflows/build.yml/badge.svg"/></a>

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To understand the foundational philosophy and goals of this system, read the Zen of Reticulum.

Reticulum is the cryptography-based networking stack for building local and wide-area

networks with 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,

inter-connectable 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 rely on IP or higher

layers, but it is possible to use IP 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 frees up overhead that

has been used to implement a networking stack built directly on cryptographic

principles, allowing resilience and stable functionality, even in open and

trustless networks.

No kernel modules or drivers are required. Reticulum runs completely in

userland, and can run on practically any system that runs Python 3.

The full documentation for Reticulum is available at markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/.

You can also download the Reticulum manual as a PDF or as an e-book in EPUB format.

For more info, see reticulum.network and the FAQ section of the wiki.

• Coordination-less globally unique addressing and identification

• Fully self-configuring multi-hop routing over heterogeneous carriers

• Flexible scalability over heterogeneous topologies

• Reticulum can carry data over any mixture of physical mediums and topologies

• Low-bandwidth networks can co-exist and interoperate with large, high-bandwidth networks

• Initiator anonymity, communicate without revealing your identity

• Reticulum does not include source addresses on any packets

• Asymmetric X25519 encryption and Ed25519 signatures as a basis for all communication

• The foundational Reticulum Identity Keys are 512-bit Elliptic Curve keysets

• Forward Secrecy is available for all communication types, both for single packets and over links

• Reticulum uses the following format for encrypted tokens:

• Ephemeral per-packet and link keys and derived from an ECDH key exchange on Curve25519

• AES-256 in CBC mode with PKCS7 padding

• HMAC using SHA256 for authentication

• IVs are generated through os.urandom()

• Unforgeable packet delivery confirmations

• Flexible and extensible interface system

• Reticulum includes a large variety of built-in interface types

• Ability to load and utilise custom user- or community-supplied interface types

• Easily create your own custom interfaces for communicating over anything

• Authentication and virtual network segmentation on all supported interface types

• An intuitive and easy-to-use API

• Simpler and easier to use than sockets APIs, but more powerful

• Makes building distributed and decentralised applications much simpler

• Reliable and efficient transfer of arbitrary amounts of data

• Reticulum can handle a few bytes of data or files of many gigabytes

• Sequencing, compression, transfer coordination and checksumming are automatic

• The API is very easy to use, and provides transfer progress

• Lightweight, flexible and expandable Request/Response mechanism

• Efficient link establishment

• Total cost of setting up an encrypted and verified link is only 3 packets, totalling 297 bytes

• Low cost of keeping links open at only 0.44 bits per second

• Reliable sequential delivery with Channel and Buffer mechanisms

The Python code in this repository is the Reference Implementation of Reticulum.

The Reticulum Protocol is defined entirely and authoritatively by this reference

implementation, and its associated manual. It is maintained by Mark Qvist,

identified by the Reticulum Identity T383838<bc7291552be7a58f361522990465165c>.

No second-order protocol specification derivatives currently do, or will ever exist. You can't get a better specification than one that is executable, functional, testable, deployed and operating 24/7 across the planet.

There is not, and never will be a separate, derived "formal spec", "RFC" or anything similar for Reticulum:

Compatibility with the Reticulum Protocol is defined as having full interoperability,

and sufficient functional parity with this reference implementation. Any specific protocol

implementation that achieves this is Reticulum. Any that does not is not Reticulum.

The reference implementation is licensed under the Reticulum License.

The Reticulum Protocol was dedicated to the Public Domain in 2016.

If you want to quickly get an idea of what Reticulum can do, take a look at the

section of the manual, or the following resources:

• LXMF is a distributed, delay and disruption tolerant message transfer protocol built on Reticulum

• The LXST protocol and framework provides real-time audio and signals transport over Reticulum. It includes primitives and utilities for building voice-based applications and hardware devices, such as the T383838rnphone program, that can be used to build hardware telephones.

• For an off-grid, encrypted and resilient mesh communications platform, see Nomad Network

• The Android, Linux, macOS and Windows app Sideband has a graphical interface and many advanced features, such as file transfers, image and voice messages, real-time voice calls, a distributed telemetry system, mapping capabilities and full plugin extensibility.

• MeshChatX is a full-featured LXMF client with many built-in tools and functionalities, that also supports image and voice messages, file transfers and voice calls. It also includes a built-in page browser for browsing Nomad Network nodes.

• You can use the included rnsh program to establish remote shell sessions over Reticulum.

Over practically any medium that can support at least a half-duplex channel

with greater throughput than 5 bits per second, and an MTU of 500 bytes. Data radios,

modems, LoRa radios, serial lines, AX.25 TNCs, amateur radio digital modes,

WiFi and Ethernet devices, free-space optical links, and similar systems are

all examples of the types of physical devices Reticulum can use.

An open-source LoRa-based interface called

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, your local WiFi network

or the Internet, 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, using any available mixture of

available infrastructure.

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

section of the Reticulum Manual.

To simply install Reticulum and related utilities on your system, the easiest way is via T383838pip.

You can then start any program that uses Reticulum, or start Reticulum as a system service with

the rnsd utility.

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If you are using an operating system that blocks normal user package installation via T383838pip,

you can return T383838pip to normal behaviour by editing the T383838~/.config/pip/pip.conf file,

and adding the following directive in the T383838[global] section:

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Alternatively, you can use the T383838pipx tool to install Reticulum in an isolated environment:

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When first started, Reticulum will create a default configuration file,

providing basic connectivity to other Reticulum peers that might be locally

reachable. The default config file contains a few examples, and references for

creating a more complex configuration.

If you have an old version of T383838pip on your system, you may need to upgrade it first with T383838pip install pip --upgrade. If you no not already have T383838pip installed, you can install it using the package manager of your system with T383838sudo apt install python3-pip or similar.

For more detailed examples on how to expand communication over many mediums such

as packet radio or LoRa, serial ports, or over fast IP links and the Internet using

the UDP and TCP interfaces, take a look at the Supported Interfaces

section of the 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

section of the Reticulum Manual.

• The system daemon T383838rnsd for running Reticulum as an always-available service

• An interface status utility called T383838rnstatus, that displays information about interfaces

• The path lookup and management tool T383838rnpath letting you view and modify path tables

• A diagnostics tool called T383838rnprobe for checking connectivity to destinations

• A simple file transfer program called T383838rncp making it easy to transfer files between systems

• The identity management and encryption utility T383838rnid let's you manage Identities and encrypt/decrypt files

• The T383838rnsh program allows you to establish fully interactive shell session with remote systems

• The remote command execution program T383838rnx let's you run simple commands and programs and retrieve output from remote systems

• The T383838rngit program provides a full multi-repository Git node for serving repositories over Reticulum

• The included T383838git-remote-rns helper allows you to interact with Git repositories over Reticulum

All tools, including T383838rnx and T383838rncp, work reliably and well even over very

low-bandwidth links like LoRa or Packet Radio. For full-featured remote shells

over Reticulum, also have a look at the rnsh

program.

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 simple to implement a custom interface module.

Pull requests for custom interfaces are gratefully accepted, provided they are

generally useful and well-tested in real-world usage.

Currently, the following built-in interfaces are supported:

• Any Ethernet device

• LoRa using RNode

• Packet Radio TNCs (with or without AX.25)

• KISS-compatible hardware and software modems

• Any device with a serial port

• TCP over IP networks

• UDP over IP networks

• External programs via stdio or pipes

• Custom hardware via stdio or pipes

Reticulum targets a very wide usable performance envelope, but prioritises

functionality and performance on low-bandwidth mediums. The goal is to

provide a dynamic performance envelope from 250 bits per second, to 1 gigabit

per second on normal hardware.

Currently, the usable performance envelope is approximately 150 bits per second

to 500 megabits per second, with physical mediums faster than that not being

saturated. Performance beyond the current level is intended for future

upgrades, but not highly prioritised at this point in time.

All core protocol features are implemented and functioning, but additions will

probably occur as real-world use is explored and understood. The API and wire-format

can be considered stable.

The installation of the default T383838rns package requires only two external dependencies, listed

below. Almost all systems and distributions have readily available packages for

these dependencies, and when the T383838rns package is installed with T383838pip, they

will be downloaded and installed as well.

• PyCA/cryptography

• pyserial

On more unusual systems, and in some rare cases, it might not be possible to

install or even compile one or more of the above modules. In such situations,

you can use the T383838rnspure package instead, which require no external

dependencies for installation. Please note that the contents of the T383838rns and

T383838rnspure packages are identical. The only difference is that the T383838rnspure

package lists no dependencies required for installation.

No matter how Reticulum is installed and started, it will load external

dependencies only if they are needed and available. If for example you want

to use Reticulum on a system that cannot support

pyserial, it is perfectly possible to

do so using the T383838rnspure package, but Reticulum will not be able to use

serial-based interfaces. All other available modules will still be loaded when

needed.

Please Note! If you use the T383838rnspure package to run Reticulum on systems

that do not support PyCA/cryptography,

it is important that you read and understand the [Cryptographic

Primitives](#cryptographic-primitives) section of this document.

Reticulum is not a service you subscribe to, nor is it a single global network you "join".

Reticulum provides functionality for discovering available public interfaces

over the network itself, and the broader community has provided various directories

of publicly available entrypoints to bootstrap connectivity.

To learn how to establish initial connectivity over Reticulum, read the Bootstrapping Connectivity section of the manual.

If you already have a general idea of how this works, you can use community-run

sites such as directory.rns.recipes and rmap.world

to find interface definitions for initial connectivity to the global distributed Reticulum backbone.

For this to be possible, I need your help. Please support the continued development of open, free and private communications systems by donating via one of the following channels:

• Monero:

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• Bitcoin

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• Ethereum

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• Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/Reticulum/

• Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/markqvist

Reticulum uses a simple suite of efficient, strong and well-tested cryptographic

primitives, with widely available implementations that can be used both on

general-purpose CPUs and on microcontrollers.

One of the primary considerations for choosing this particular set of primitives is

that they can be implemented safely with relatively few pitfalls, on practically

all current computing platforms.

The primitives listed here are authoritative. Anything claiming to be Reticulum,

but not using these exact primitives is not Reticulum, and possibly an

intentionally compromised or weakened clone. The utilised primitives are:

• Reticulum Identity Keys are 512-bit Curve25519 keysets

• A 256-bit Ed25519 key for signatures

• A 256-bit X22519 key for ECDH key exchanges

• HKDF for key derivation

• Encrypted tokens are based on the Fernet spec

• Ephemeral keys derived from an ECDH key exchange on Curve25519

• HMAC using SHA256 for message authentication

• IVs must be generated through T383838os.urandom() or better

• AES-256 in CBC mode with PKCS7 padding

• No Fernet version and timestamp metadata fields

• SHA-256

• SHA-512

In the default installation configuration, the T383838X25519, T383838Ed25519,

and T383838AES-256-CBC primitives are provided by OpenSSL

(via the PyCA/cryptography package).

The hashing functions T383838SHA-256 and T383838SHA-512 are provided by the standard

Python hashlib. The T383838HKDF,

T383838HMAC, T383838Token primitives, and the T383838PKCS7 padding function are always

provided by the following internal implementations:

• HKDF.py

• HMAC.py

• Token.py

• PKCS7.py

Reticulum also includes a complete implementation of all necessary primitives

in pure Python. If OpenSSL and PyCA are not available on the system when

Reticulum is started, Reticulum will instead use the internal pure-python

primitives. A trivial consequence of this is performance, with the OpenSSL

backend being much faster. The most important consequence however, is the

potential loss of security by using primitives that has not seen the same

amount of scrutiny, testing and review as those from OpenSSL.

Please note that by default, installing Reticulum will require OpenSSL and

PyCA to also be automatically installed if not already available. It is only

possible to use the pure-python primitives if this requirement is specifically

overridden by the user, for example by installing the T383838rnspure package instead

of the normal T383838rns package, or by running directly from local source-code.

If you want to use the internal pure-python primitives, it is **highly

advisable** that you have a good understanding of the risks that this pose, and

make an informed decision on whether those risks are acceptable to you.

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 or security breaking bugs. If you want to help out, or help sponsor an

audit, please do get in touch.

Reticulum can only exist because of the mountain of Open Source work it was

built on top of, the contributions of everyone involved, and everyone that has

supported the project through the years. To everyone who has helped, thank you

so much.

A number of other modules and projects are either part of, or used by

Reticulum. Sincere thanks to the authors and contributors of the following

projects:

• PyCA/cryptography, BSD License

• Pure-25519 by Brian Warner, MIT License

• Pysha2 by Thom Dixon, MIT License

• Python AES-128 by Or Gur Arie, MIT License

• Python AES-256 by BoppreH, MIT License

• Curve25519.py by Nicko van Someren, Public Domain

• I2Plib by Viktor Villainov

• PySerial by Chris Liechti, BSD License

• Configobj by Michael Foord, Nicola Larosa, Rob Dennis & Eli Courtwright, BSD License

• ifaddr by Stefan C. Mueller, MIT License

• Umsgpack.py by Ivan A. Sergeev

• rnsh by Aaron Heise

• Python