Questions & Answers

This section contains a list of common questions, and associated answers.

• What are the system requirements for running Reticulum?
  Practically any system that can run Python3 can also run Reticulum. Any computer made since the early 2000's should work, provided it has a reasonably up-to-date operating system installed. Even low-power embedded devices with 256 megabytes of RAM will run Reticulum.
• Does Reticulum work without the Internet?
  Yes. Reticulum is itself both a networking, and an inter-net protocol. A key difference between Reticulum and IPv4/v6, however, is that Reticulum does not require any central coordination or authority to work. As soon as two devices running Reticulum can talk to each other, they form a network. That network can dynamically grow to planetary-scale nets, split up, re-connect and heal in any number of ways, while still continuing to function. As long as there is some sort of physical way for two or more devices to communicate, Reticulum will allow them to form a secure and reliable network.
• Who owns and controls the addresses I use on a Reticulum network?
  You do. Every address is in complete ownership and control of the person that created it.
• If nobody centrally controls the addresses, will my address still be globally reachable?
  Yes. Reticulum ensures end-to-end connectivity. All addresses are globally and directly reachable. Reticulum has no concept of "private address spaces" and NAT, as you might be suffering from with IPv4.
• Is communication over Reticulum encrypted?
  Yes. All traffic is end-to-end encrypted. Reticulum is fundamentally unable to route unencrypted traffic. Links established over Reticulum networks offer forward secrecy, by using ephemeral encryption keys.
• Could you build a global Internet with Reticulum instead of IP?
  Yes. In theory this is completely possible, but it will take a lot of refinement, development, hardware support and adoption to transition the global base-layer for communication to Reticulum. Please help us towards this goal!
• Is Reticulum as fast and optimised as my favorite TCP/IP stack?
  Currently not, but we are working towards being much faster than IP. The primary focus of Reticulum has been to build an understandable and well-documented reference implementation, that works exceptionally well over medium-bandwidth to extremely low-bandwidth forms of communication. This focus is very valuable, since it allows people to build secure communications networks that span vast areas, with very simple hardware, and very little cost.
• Who created all of this?
  The Reticulum protocol, and the RNode system was created by Mark Qvist, of unsigned.io.