Reticulum is a decentralized networking stack that enables encrypted, peer-to-peer communication over diverse physical mediums without relying on central infrastructure or IP protocols. It uses self-sovereign cryptographic identities for routing and authentication, replacing traditional IP addresses with collision-free globally unique addresses that require no central coordination. Every packet is encrypted by default using ephemeral key exchanges with forward secrecy, and unencrypted traffic is dropped as invalid.
The stack unifies heterogeneous transport mediums—including LoRa radio, packet radio, serial links, WiFi, Ethernet, and TCP/IP—into a single self-configuring mesh through a plugin-based interface system. It provides autonomous path discovery and maintenance that adapts to topology changes without central servers, along with a resource transfer protocol for reliable data delivery from bytes to gigabytes. Built-in tools support encrypted messaging with offline delivery, real-time group chat, bulletin boards, voice calls, file synchronization, Git repository hosting, distributed web content browsing and hosting, and remote shell access over low-bandwidth links.
Reticulum includes utilities for monitoring network health, probing paths, managing cryptographic identities, controlling interface behavior, and sharing blocklists for community-wide spam filtering. It supports anonymous communication by omitting source addresses from packets, and offers fallback to pure-Python cryptography when native libraries are unavailable. The stack can run as a background daemon on multiple platforms, including Android via Termux, and allows hosting public entrypoints for remote peers to join the mesh over the Internet.
