<li><p>Flexible and extensible interface system</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Reticulum includes a large variety of built-in interface types</p></li>
<li><p>Ability to load and utilise custom user- or community-supplied interface types</p></li>
<li><p>Easily create your own custom interfaces for communicating over anything</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>Authentication and virtual network segmentation on all supported interface types</p></li>
<li><p>An intuitive and easy-to-use API</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Simpler and easier to use than sockets APIs and simpler, but more powerful</p></li>
<li><p>Makes building distributed and decentralised applications much simpler</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>Reliable and efficient transfer of arbitrary amounts of data</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Reticulum can handle a few bytes of data or files of many gigabytes</p></li>
<li><p>Sequencing, compression, transfer coordination and checksumming are automatic</p></li>
<li><p>The API is very easy to use, and provides transfer progress</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>Lightweight, flexible and expandable Request/Response mechanism</p></li>
<li><p>Efficient link establishment</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Total cost of setting up an encrypted and verified link is only 3 packets, totalling 297 bytes</p></li>
<li><p>Low cost of keeping links open at only 0.44 bits per second</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>Reliable sequential delivery with Channel and Buffer mechanisms</p></li>
</ul>
</section>
<sectionid="where-can-reticulum-be-used">
<h2>Where can Reticulum be Used?<aclass="headerlink"href="#where-can-reticulum-be-used"title="Permalink to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p>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,
ad-hoc WiFi, free-space optical links and similar systems are all examples
of the types of interfaces Reticulum was designed for.</p>
<p>An open-source LoRa-based interface called <aclass="reference external"href="https://unsigned.io/rnode">RNode</a>
has been designed as an example transceiver that is very suitable for
Reticulum. It is possible to build it yourself, to transform a common LoRa
development board into one, or it can be purchased as a complete transceiver
from various vendors.</p>
<p>Reticulum can also be encapsulated over existing IP networks, so there’s
nothing stopping you from using it over wired Ethernet or your local WiFi
network, 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.</p>
<p>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
added, 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.</p>
</section>
<sectionid="interface-types-and-devices">
<h2>Interface Types and Devices<aclass="headerlink"href="#interface-types-and-devices"title="Permalink to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p>Reticulum implements a range of generalised interface types that covers the communications hardware that Reticulum can run over. If your hardware is not supported, it’s simple to <aclass="reference internal"href="examples.html#example-custominterface"><spanclass="std std-ref">implement an interface class</span></a>. Currently, Reticulum can use the following devices and communication mediums:</p>
<ulclass="simple">
<li><p>Any Ethernet device</p>
<ul>
<li><p>WiFi devices</p></li>
<li><p>Wired Ethernet devices</p></li>
<li><p>Fibre-optic transceivers</p></li>
<li><p>Data radios with Ethernet ports</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>LoRa using <aclass="reference external"href="https://unsigned.io/rnode">RNode</a></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Can be installed on <aclass="reference external"href="https://github.com/markqvist/rnodeconfigutil#supported-devices">many popular LoRa boards</a></p></li>
<li><p>Can be purchased as a <aclass="reference external"href="https://unsigned.io/rnode">ready to use transceiver</a></p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>Packet Radio TNCs, such as <aclass="reference external"href="https://unsigned.io/openmodem">OpenModem</a></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Any packet radio TNC in KISS mode</p></li>
<li><p>Ideal for VHF and UHF radio</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p>Any device with a serial port</p></li>
<li><p>The I2P network</p></li>
<li><p>TCP over IP networks</p></li>
<li><p>UDP over IP networks</p></li>
<li><p>Anything you can connect via stdio</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Reticulum can use external programs and pipes as interfaces</p></li>
<li><p>This can be used to easily hack in virtual interfaces</p></li>
<li><p>Or to quickly create interfaces with custom hardware</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>For a full list and more details, see the <aclass="reference internal"href="interfaces.html#interfaces-main"><spanclass="std std-ref">Supported Interfaces</span></a> chapter.</p>
</section>
<sectionid="caveat-emptor">
<h2>Caveat Emptor<aclass="headerlink"href="#caveat-emptor"title="Permalink to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p>Reticulum is an experimental networking stack, and should be considered as
such. While it has been built with cryptography best-practices very foremost in
mind, it has not yet been externally security audited, and there could very well be
privacy-breaking bugs. To be considered secure, Reticulum needs a thorough
security review by independent cryptographers and security researchers. If you
want to help out with this, or can help sponsor an audit, please do get in touch.</p>
