ee5ba48802
Closes Tier 3 in a single consolidated section because all five items
share state (path_table, announce_table, link_table, reverse_table,
tunnels) and are emergent behaviours of the same Transport.inbound
dispatch logic.
Seven sub-sections:
§12.1 transport_enabled toggle — leaf clients populate path_table
only for destinations they personally need; transport-mode
nodes populate it for everything they hear about.
§12.2 DATA forwarding rules — three-case branch on remaining_hops
(>1 forward as HEADER_2 with new transport_id; ==1 strip
transport_id and forward as HEADER_1 broadcast; ==0 local).
LINKREQUEST forwarding extras (link_table entry + §6.6 MTU
clamp). Non-LINKREQUEST gets a reverse_table entry.
§12.3 ANNOUNCE rebroadcasting — announce_table retransmit queue,
per-interface ANNOUNCE_CAP airtime budget, announce_queue
drain order (lowest-hop-count first), random_blob replay
defence with MAX_RANDOM_BLOBS sliding window, and the
PATH_RESPONSE short-circuit (path-responses go on a
specific interface, not broadcast).
§12.4 Path table management — entry shape (IDX_PT_* indexes),
three TTLs by interface mode (AP_PATH_TIME 1h, ROAMING_PATH_TIME
4h, PATHFINDER_E 30 days), stale-paths eviction, persistence
to storagepath/paths.
§12.5 Reverse-table link transport — LRPROOF forwarding via
link_table validation against the destination's known
long-term Ed25519 pub, Link DATA forwarding once
link_table[IDX_LT_VALIDATED] is set, PROOF receipt
forwarding via reverse_table (one-shot pop on use,
REVERSE_TIMEOUT bound for memory).
§12.6 Tunnels and shared-instance protocol — discovery_path_requests
recursive search (15s timeout), tunnels[] persistence across
interface flap, shared-instance protocol (regular Reticulum
packets over TCP loopback; the 'sharing' is Transport state,
not wire format).
§12.7 Source map.
Old §12 Test vectors -> §13; old §13 Source map -> §14. Section
order preserves protocol content before appendices.
TIER 3 COMPLETE. All Tier 1, 2, and 3 spec gaps closed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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| flows | ||
| test-vectors | ||
| tools | ||
| agent.md | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| README.md | ||
| SPEC.md | ||
| todo.md | ||
Reticulum Specifications
Byte-level interoperability specifications for the Reticulum Network Stack and LXMF — the parts that aren't in the upstream manuals but are needed to build a working client from scratch.
Upstream Reticulum has excellent operator-facing documentation (config, deployment, design philosophy). What's missing — and what every alternative implementation has had to reverse-engineer from the Python source — is an authoritative wire-level spec: header bit layouts, msgpack field types, signature input formats, the exact behavior of Transport.outbound, and the long list of "would never guess from reading the manual" gotchas that cost hours of debugging each.
This repo collects those findings in one place. The hope is that future client authors (Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Go, embedded C — pick your stack) can read this instead of re-deriving everything from RNS/Transport.py.
Status
Early days, contributions welcome. Current content was bootstrapped from the working notes of two reverse-engineering efforts:
- The web-based Reticulum client at
reticulum-lora-webclient - The native Android client at
reticulum-mobile-app
Each finding is grounded in upstream source citations (file + line) so it can be re-verified as RNS evolves.
What's here
SPEC.md— the single combined spec document, organized by protocol layerflows/— chronological end-to-end narratives (e.g. "send a message"), cross-referencing SPEC.md sectionstools/— self-contained Python verifier scripts that test SPEC.md claims against upstream RNS / LXMFtest-vectors/— known-good byte sequences each implementation should be able to round-trip (intent: grow into a compliance suite)
As content grows, SPEC.md will be split into per-layer files (packet header, identity, announce, token-crypto, LXMF, link, resource, transport).
Scope
In scope:
- Wire formats: byte layouts, field encodings, framing
- Signing inputs and what's hashed where
- Cross-cutting behaviors required for interop (path requests, ratchet rotation, retransmit semantics)
- "Gotchas" — things upstream code does that aren't obvious from the manual or RFC-style sketches
- Test vectors that any implementation must be able to round-trip
Out of scope:
- Operator/user documentation — see the official manual
- API design choices for any specific implementation
- Networking layer config (interfaces, transport modes) — already well documented
Source citations
Where a finding cites upstream Python code, the path is relative to a standard pip install rns lxmf installation, e.g. RNS/Transport.py, LXMF/LXMF.py. Where the bundled umsgpack is referenced, the path is RNS/vendor/umsgpack.py.
When upstream code changes such that a citation no longer matches, file an issue or PR — the goal is to track the de-facto wire spec as it actually behaves, not as it was at any single snapshot.
Contributing
If you've debugged a Reticulum interop problem and the answer wasn't in the upstream docs, please add it. Format:
### N.M Short description of the finding
**Symptom:** what you observed that prompted the investigation.
**What's happening:** the actual mechanism, ideally with upstream source citation (file + line).
**Implication / fix:** what an implementation must do to interop.
**Source:** upstream file paths and approximate line numbers.
Add a worked test vector to test-vectors/ if the finding is byte-level.
License
CC BY 4.0 — use freely, attribution appreciated.