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| writing:solarpunk_networks [2025/12/07 14:32] – JacobCoffinWrites | writing:solarpunk_networks [2026/04/08 20:40] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1 |
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| This is obviously going to be an extremely simple summary because I'm a writer with a very light technical background. The big thing is that these networks don't use traditional infrastructure like cell towers, underground fiber lines, datacenters, or any of that when relaying these text messages. There's no big centralized infrastructure for a company to own and charge for. They run entirely on the LoRa hardware individuals and groups set up, and they're free to use. | This is obviously going to be an extremely simple summary because I'm a writer with a very light technical background. The big thing is that these networks don't use traditional infrastructure like cell towers, underground fiber lines, datacenters, or any of that when relaying these text messages. There's no big centralized infrastructure for a company to own and charge for. They run entirely on the LoRa hardware individuals and groups set up, and they're free to use. |
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| In Meshtastic especially, there's no 'backbone' infrastructure at all. The node you're using to send is both the endpoint for your communications and the backbone for somebody else's. When someone sends a message all the other nodes in range see it and use a preprogrammed logic to decide who re-broadcasts it and who doesn't. To grow the network you need to balance adding more nodes with adding too much traffic. This strikes me as being a risky arrangement (seems like there's only so much bandwidth available, and Metastatic could fail from success if too many people try to use it at once - even though that's how it's supposed to grow. That said, there's a sort of romance in the idea that there's no infrastructure involved but each other - it's a truly democratized sort of system where the cost of using it is enabling others to also use it by relaying their messages. | In Meshtastic especially, there's no 'backbone' infrastructure at all (I think this info is out of date). The node you're using to send is both the endpoint for your communications and the backbone for somebody else's. When someone sends a message all the other nodes in range see it and use a preprogrammed logic to decide who re-broadcasts it and who doesn't. To grow the network you need to balance adding more nodes with adding too much traffic. This strikes me as being a risky arrangement (seems like there's only so much bandwidth available, and Metastatic could fail from success if too many people try to use it at once - even though that's how it's supposed to grow. That said, there's a sort of romance in the idea that there's no infrastructure involved but each other - it's a truly democratized sort of system where the cost of using it is enabling others to also use it by relaying their messages. |
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| [[https://www.instructables.com/Meshtastic-Solar-Buoy/|Here's a neat example of a waterproofed, solar-powered meshtastic node set up just to hang around extending the network.]] | [[https://www.instructables.com/Meshtastic-Solar-Buoy/|Here's a neat example of a waterproofed, solar-powered meshtastic node set up just to hang around extending the network.]] |
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| Meshcore is also off the grid, but it has a DIY backbone of dedicated repeaters that people set up (often on rooftops and hanging from tall trees). These repeaters are what relay your message and bounce it around until it reaches its destination. The endpoint node ("companion") you carry around and use to text doesn't rebroadcast other people's messages. If you want to grow the network you add more repeaters. This gives Meshcore advocates a pretty concrete goal for building out a mesh - they can buy and rig up hardware and set it up in good locations (LoRa is line-of-sight) in order to make the mesh more effective and usable for more people. Someone in my local mesh is apparently using a quadcopter drone to drop solar-powered repeater nodes into tall trees and the group is pretty active in trying to get access to rooftops with good views. | Meshcore is also off the grid, but it has a DIY backbone of dedicated repeaters that people set up (often on rooftops and hanging from tall trees). These repeaters are what relay your message and bounce it around until it reaches its destination. The endpoint node ("companion") you carry around and use to text doesn't rebroadcast other people's messages. If you want to grow the network you add more repeaters. This gives Meshcore advocates a pretty concrete goal for building out a mesh - they can buy and rig up hardware and set it up in good locations (LoRa is line-of-sight) in order to make the mesh more effective and usable for more people. Someone in my local mesh is apparently using a quadcopter drone to drop solar-powered repeater nodes into tall trees and the group is pretty active in trying to get access to rooftops with good views. |
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| | If you'd like to learn more about meshcore I really recommend this guide: https://github.com/samuk/awesome-meshcore |
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| To my uninformed opinion Meshcore seems to be better designed as a network. The ability to build out the infrastructure for this communications system piece by piece, in this plug-and-play sort of way feels like a good fit for the genre. | To my uninformed opinion Meshcore seems to be better designed as a network. The ability to build out the infrastructure for this communications system piece by piece, in this plug-and-play sort of way feels like a good fit for the genre. |
| So this one is more complicated - it's basically a lot of the above but also it's a whole alternate internet. Reticulum is a whole cryptography-based network stack which [[https://slrpnk.net/post/12490840|feels like it was developed from the ground up out of radio networking protocols]]. It can run over the same LoRa radio devices Meshtastic and Meshcore can use, but it can also use ad-hoc WiFi, data radios, modems, serial lines, amateur radio digital modes, and it can even tunnel through the Internet (meaning you could set up a local mesh of LoRa radios, old personal computers and laptops, and whatever wireless routers and other networking gear you can find, connect a neighborhood together using Reticulum as the underlying network, then connect that through the internet to Reticulum networks anywhere in the world. You can write software to run on Reticulum, and it already has a bunch of programs like [[https://github.com/markqvist/nomadnet|NomadNet]] which can do encrypted messaging (same goal as Meshtastic and Meshcore) but also host and view text-based web pages and I think some other stuff. In a lot of ways, this one feels like the meshnet you'd see in a scifi book, an all-encrypted network stack that allows you to just link together any old hardware you can scrape together and rebuild a decentralized version of the internet grounded in much more secure protocols. (I'll admit I straight up don't understand how a lot of this works on the network/cryptography level, it actually seems similar to [[https://www.torproject.org/|Tor]] in some ways but I don't understand that very well either.) | So this one is more complicated - it's basically a lot of the above but also it's a whole alternate internet. Reticulum is a whole cryptography-based network stack which [[https://slrpnk.net/post/12490840|feels like it was developed from the ground up out of radio networking protocols]]. It can run over the same LoRa radio devices Meshtastic and Meshcore can use, but it can also use ad-hoc WiFi, data radios, modems, serial lines, amateur radio digital modes, and it can even tunnel through the Internet (meaning you could set up a local mesh of LoRa radios, old personal computers and laptops, and whatever wireless routers and other networking gear you can find, connect a neighborhood together using Reticulum as the underlying network, then connect that through the internet to Reticulum networks anywhere in the world. You can write software to run on Reticulum, and it already has a bunch of programs like [[https://github.com/markqvist/nomadnet|NomadNet]] which can do encrypted messaging (same goal as Meshtastic and Meshcore) but also host and view text-based web pages and I think some other stuff. In a lot of ways, this one feels like the meshnet you'd see in a scifi book, an all-encrypted network stack that allows you to just link together any old hardware you can scrape together and rebuild a decentralized version of the internet grounded in much more secure protocols. (I'll admit I straight up don't understand how a lot of this works on the network/cryptography level, it actually seems similar to [[https://www.torproject.org/|Tor]] in some ways but I don't understand that very well either.) |
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| | If you'd like to read more about this from someone who does understand it, there are some very good beginner's guides here: https://www.carstenboll.dk/reticulum-a-beginners-guide/ |
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| | And here: https://github.com/samuk/awesome-reticulum/ |
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| === Real life Meshnets === | === Real life Meshnets === |
