The internet you use today needs companies. An internet provider owns the
cable, a phone company owns the tower, and both can see who you talk to. Reticulum
is free software that builds a different kind of network — a mesh — where ordinary
people own the radios, every message is locked with strong encryption, and there is no
company in the middle at all.
你今天使用的互联网离不开公司：网络运营商拥有电缆，电信公司拥有信号塔，
而且它们都能看到你在和谁通话。Reticulum 是一个自由软件，它构建的是另一种网络——
网状网络：无线电设备归普通人所有，每条消息都用强加密锁住，中间完全没有公司。
Work in this order: learn the words, watch the
overview, then open the machines and say what you see. Everything on this page is
meant to be said out loud.
按这个顺序：先学词，再看视频，然后打开机器，把你看到的说出来。
这一页所有内容都是用来大声说的。
Twenty-two terms this lab uses, each with a short definition, a longer explanation, and one sentence to say aloud. Learn these first, because every machine below leans on them constantly.
Twenty-two words. Tap 🔊 say it to hear one, and 📖 tell me more
for the real explanation. Learn these first — the rest of the page uses them constantly.
二十二个词。点“🔊 say it”听发音，点“📖 tell me more”看真正的解释。
先学会这些，后面整页都在用它们。
🎤 Speaking drill
Five words at a time. Press the mic, say all five in any order, then check.
一次五个词。按下麦克风，任意顺序说出这五个词，然后检查。
listening
what you say appears here…
🎬 The whole picture — subtitles in English, 中文 and ไทย
Summary
A video overview of Reticulum: what it is, why people build networks without internet providers, and how the pieces fit together. The narration is synthetic. Subtitles are available in English, Chinese and Thai, and the 中文 button on this page switches them for you.
Watch this before you open the machines, so the lessons below have somewhere
to land. Turn on 中文 at the top to switch the subtitles to Chinese; Thai subtitles are in
the player's own CC menu.
先看这个再打开下面的机器，这样后面的课程才有落脚点。打开页面顶部的“中文”，
字幕会切换成中文；泰文字幕在播放器自己的 CC 菜单里。
A video overview. A computer wrote the narration and reads it aloud — it
is not a person. It was generated from the same sources this page is built on: the
official Reticulum manual and site. Treat it as a summary of this page, not as a source.
The subtitles were transcribed from the finished audio and then translated, so all three
languages follow the same voice.
这段概览由计算机撰写并朗读，不是真人。它基于与本页相同的资料生成：
Reticulum 官方手册和官网。请把它当作本页的摘要，而不是资料来源。
字幕先从成片音频转写，再翻译成中文和泰文，所以三种语言跟随同一段旁白。
🔬 How the mesh works
Six machines. Click the nodes, drag the sliders, break things.
Then say what you see in English.
六台机器。点击节点，拖动滑块，随便弄坏。然后用英语说出你看到的。
🕸 Break the network
Summary
A star network has one owner in the middle, and it dies when the middle dies. A mesh network has no middle. Every node passes messages for its neighbours, so when one node fails, the message simply walks around it. Click any node to break it and watch the path change.
You are A, on the left. Your friend is Z, on the right.
Click ✉️ Send to send a message, and click any grey node to break it.
Then try the same thing in star mode.
你是左边的 A，你的朋友是右边的 Z。点“✉️ Send”发一条消息，
再点击任意灰色节点把它弄坏。然后切换到星形模式做同样的事。
delivered 0· failed 0· last path —
Why the star dies and the mesh does not
In the star, every message must pass through the hub, because the hub
owns the network. That is how your phone works today: no tower, no service. In the
mesh, every node forwards messages for its neighbours. Any node can fail — the
message walks around the hole. Reticulum is software for building the second kind.
在星形网络里，每条消息都必须经过中心枢纽，因为枢纽拥有网络——
这就是你今天手机的工作方式：没有信号塔就没有服务。在网状网络里，
每个节点都替邻居转发消息，任何节点都可以失效——消息会绕过缺口。
Reticulum 就是用来构建第二种网络的软件。
Try this:
Send a message. Count the hops.
Break a node on the path. Send again — a new path appears.
Keep breaking nodes until the message fails. How many did it take?
Switch to ⭐ star mode and break the hub. One click kills everything.
Nobody tells the mesh how to recover. There is no control room. Each
node only knows its neighbours, and that is enough — the path is found again from
local information. Engineers call this self-healing, and it is the property
that makes mesh networks survive floods, earthquakes and switched-off internet.
没有人告诉网状网络如何恢复，也没有控制室。每个节点只认识自己的邻居，
而这就够了——路径可以从局部信息中重新找到。工程师称之为自愈，
正是这个性质让网状网络能挺过洪水、地震和被关闭的互联网。
📣 The announce — how the mesh learns you exist
Summary
A new node introduces itself with one small signed message called an announce. Neighbours pass it outward, hop by hop, and every transport node remembers one thing: which direction the announce came from. That single fact is enough to route messages back — no map of the network is ever built or needed.
A bakery in the mesh switches on its node and announces. Drag the slider,
or press play, and watch the announce spread.
网里的一家面包店打开节点并发出公告。拖动滑块或按播放，看公告如何扩散。
announcingheard it & remembered the directionnot yet
What each node actually remembers
Not the whole network. Just one line per destination: "the bakery
is that way, about 3 hops". This is why Reticulum needs no central registry, no
address server and no company — the routing table builds itself out of announces.
The announce is signed with the bakery's private key, so nobody can pretend to be
the bakery.
不是整个网络，而是每个目的地只记一行：“面包店在那个方向，大约 3 跳。”
这就是 Reticulum 不需要中央登记处、地址服务器或公司的原因——路由表由公告自己长出来。
公告用面包店的私钥签名，所以没有人能冒充面包店。
Try this:
Scrub slowly to the middle. Which nodes know the bakery after two hops?
Scrub to the end. Every node now stores one small memory — say it aloud:
"The bakery is three hops away."
试试这些：慢慢拖到中间——两跳之后哪些节点知道了面包店？
拖到最后——每个节点都存下了一条小记忆。大声说出来：“The bakery is three hops away.”
Why not just flood every message everywhere?
Some simple mesh systems do exactly that — every message goes to
everyone, and radios repeat everything they hear. It works for a village, then chokes:
double the nodes and you far more than double the noise. Reticulum floods only the
tiny announces, and then sends real traffic along the one remembered direction. That
is the difference that lets it grow beyond a neighbourhood.
一些简单的网状系统正是这么做的——每条消息发给所有人，电台重复听到的一切。
在一个村子里可行，然后就会堵死：节点翻倍，噪音远不止翻倍。Reticulum 只洪泛微小的公告，
真正的流量沿着记住的那个方向发送。正是这一点让它能超越一个街区的规模。
📦 Inside one packet
Summary
Everything Reticulum sends travels in packets of at most five hundred bytes. A tiny header says what kind of packet it is and how far it has walked. Sixteen bytes name the destination. The rest is your message, encrypted. One thing is missing on purpose: there is no sender's address anywhere in the packet.
Click each part of the packet. One of the parts is a trick.
a whole packet ≤ 500 bytes — smaller than this paragraph点击数据包的每个部分。其中一个部分是个“陷阱”。
✍️ Does your message fit?
Type a message. The counter shows how many
bytes it needs, and whether it still fits in a single encrypted packet.
输入一条消息。计数器显示它需要多少字节，以及是否还能装进一个加密数据包。
Why so small?
Because Reticulum promises to work over almost anything — WiFi, but
also a LoRa radio whispering at one thousand bits per second, or a shortwave link at
even less. The official minimum is five bits per second. At that speed a single
500-byte packet takes over ten minutes, so every byte has to earn its place. Words
travel well. Photos and video do not — and that is a fair trade for a network no one
can turn off.
因为 Reticulum 承诺几乎在任何介质上都能工作——WiFi 可以，
每秒一千比特的 LoRa 电台可以，速度更低的短波链路也可以。官方的最低要求是每秒五比特。
在那种速度下，一个 500 字节的包要传十多分钟，所以每个字节都必须物有所值。
文字很适合这样旅行，照片和视频不行——而这是一个没人能关掉的网络所换来的公平代价。
🔐 The handshake — two secrets become one
Summary
Before two nodes talk, they perform a key exchange. Each side keeps a private key and shares a public key. Mixing my private key with your public key gives both of us the same shared secret — but a listener who only saw the public keys cannot compute it. Every conversation gets fresh keys, so even a stolen key cannot unlock old messages.
A wants a private line to B. Eve is listening to everything in
the middle. Drag the slider and watch why listening is not enough.
A 想和 B 建一条私密线路。Eve 在中间窃听一切。
拖动滑块，看看为什么光靠窃听没有用。
The maths behind the magic
Reticulum uses elliptic-curve cryptography: X25519 for the key
exchange and Ed25519 for signatures. The one-way trick is real mathematics — going
forward (making a public key from a private one) is easy, going backward is so hard
that every computer on Earth working together would not finish before the sun burns
out. This is the same family of maths that protects online banking.
Reticulum 使用椭圆曲线密码学：X25519 做密钥交换，Ed25519 做签名。
这个单向技巧是真实的数学——正向（由私钥生成公钥）很容易，
反向却难到全地球的计算机一起算，太阳烧完也算不完。
保护网上银行的正是同一族数学。
Try this:
Scrub to the key crossing. What exactly did Eve capture?
Scrub to the end. Say it aloud: "Eve has both public keys, and she still
has nothing."
试试这些：拖到公钥交错的位置——Eve 到底截到了什么？
拖到最后，大声说：“Eve has both public keys, and she still has nothing.”
What is forward secrecy?
Every link uses fresh, throw-away keys, made for that
conversation and destroyed after it. Imagine police seize B's node next year and copy
every key on it. Old recordings of the radio traffic still cannot be decrypted,
because the keys that protected them no longer exist anywhere. That property is
called forward secrecy, and Reticulum builds it in by default.
每条链路都使用为这次会话临时生成、用完即毁的密钥。
想象明年警方查扣了 B 的节点并复制了上面的所有密钥——过去录下的无线电流量仍然无法解密，
因为当时保护它们的密钥已经在世界上不存在了。这个性质叫前向保密，
Reticulum 默认内建。
Who are you, in a network with no accounts?
There is no sign-up and no phone number. Your identity is a
key pair your own device generates, and your address is a 16-byte fingerprint
derived from the public half. Make ten identities if you like; throw one away when
you are done with it. Nobody issues them, so nobody can take them away.
没有注册，也没有电话号码。你的身份就是你自己的设备生成的一对密钥，
你的地址是由公钥推导出的 16 字节指纹。愿意的话可以造十个身份，用完扔掉一个也行。
没有人签发它们，所以也没有人能收走它们。
📻 Pick your radio
Summary
Reticulum does not care what carries its packets. A LoRa radio reaches kilometres on battery power but moves about a thousand bits per second. Packet radio reaches even further and is just as slow. WiFi is fast and short. Fibre is fast and needs a company. Every choice trades speed against range against independence.
Choose a radio, then choose what you want to send. The lab computes how
long it takes. 先选一种电台，再选你想发送的东西。实验台会算出需要多长时间。
The rule of thumb
Words are light. This whole sentence weighs less than fifty bytes —
a LoRa radio carries it across town in under a second. Media is heavy: one phone
photo weighs as much as ten thousand text messages. Mesh radio networks are
for words first — and words are what matter when everything else is down.
文字很轻：这一整句话不到五十个字节，LoRa 电台不到一秒就能把它送过全城。
媒体很重：一张手机照片相当于一万条短信的重量。网状无线电网络首先是为文字服务的——
而当其他一切都瘫痪时，文字恰恰是最重要的。
Reticulum's floor is absurdly low
The stack is designed to stay usable down to 5 bits per
second — slower than a human tapping Morse code. No other modern network stack
makes that promise. It means the same software runs on a fibre line, a WiFi mesh,
a LoRa whisper, or a high-frequency radio bouncing off the ionosphere to another
continent.
这个协议栈被设计为低至每秒 5 比特仍然可用——比人敲摩尔斯电码还慢。
没有其他现代网络栈敢做这个承诺。这意味着同一套软件可以跑在光纤、WiFi 网状网、
LoRa 的低语，或经电离层反射到另一大洲的高频电台上。
🔧 Real hardware, real networks
Summary
These are photographs of real equipment that people use to build mesh networks today. A LoRa radio chip costs a few dollars. A complete pocket node costs about as much as a family dinner. A Raspberry Pi can route packets for a whole neighbourhood. None of it needs a licence, a contract, or permission.
Click a photo to learn what the thing is and what job it does in the mesh.
These are real photographs, credited at the bottom of the page — not drawings.
点击照片，了解它是什么、在网状网络里做什么工作。
这些是真实照片（致谢见页面底部），不是示意图。
A note on names. Several photos show Meshtastic
hardware. Meshtastic is a different, simpler mesh project — but it runs on the same
LoRa radio boards, and those same boards can be flashed with RNode firmware,
the open radio firmware made for Reticulum by its author. Photos of Meshtastic gear
are therefore honest photos of Reticulum-capable hardware.
关于名称的说明。有几张照片是 Meshtastic 设备。
Meshtastic 是另一个更简单的网状网络项目——但它跑在同样的 LoRa 电路板上，
而这些板子可以刷成 RNode 固件（Reticulum 作者为它编写的开放电台固件）。
因此 Meshtastic 设备的照片，就是能运行 Reticulum 的硬件的真实照片。
📌 Points to Remember
The six things worth carrying out of this lab.
这个实验室里最值得记住的六点。
A mesh has no middle. Every node forwards for its neighbours, so breaking
one node moves the path instead of killing the network. A star network dies with
its hub.
网状网络没有中心。每个节点都替邻居转发，坏掉一个节点只会改变路径，
不会杀死网络；星形网络则与它的枢纽同生共死。
The mesh learns from announces. One small signed message spreads outward,
and each node remembers only the direction it came from. No map, no registry, no
company.
网状网络靠公告来学习：一条带签名的小消息向外扩散，
每个节点只记住它来的方向。没有地图，没有登记处，没有公司。
Packets carry no sender's address. Five hundred bytes, a 16-byte destination
fingerprint, and an encrypted payload. Who sent it is simply not written down.
数据包不带发件人地址：五百字节、16 字节的目的地指纹、加密的正文。
谁发的，根本没有写。
Listening is not enough to spy. Public keys cross in the open, but the
shared secret is computed, never transmitted — and every conversation uses fresh
keys that are destroyed afterwards.
光窃听是偷不到东西的：公钥公开传递，但共享秘密是算出来的，
从不传输——而且每次会话的密钥都是新的，用完即毁。
Words are light, media is heavy. A text message crosses a LoRa mesh in
seconds; one photo weighs as much as ten thousand text messages. Down to 5 bits per
second, the network still works.
文字轻，媒体重。一条短信几秒钟就能穿过 LoRa 网状网；
一张照片相当于一万条短信。哪怕低到每秒 5 比特，网络仍然能用。
The hardware is cheap and permission-free. A radio board for a few dollars,
a pocket node for the price of a dinner, a Raspberry Pi routing for a neighbourhood.
Nobody issues the addresses, so nobody can revoke them.
硬件便宜且无需许可：几美元的电路板、一顿饭钱的口袋节点、
一台树莓派就能为街区转发。地址没有人签发，所以也没有人能吊销。
Thank you for working through it —
and see you in the next lab.
感谢你完成这一课——我们下个实验室见。
🖼️ Picture credits
Two kinds of picture appear on this page. Every
diagram is drawn by the page itself, in code. The photographs in the
hardware lesson are real objects photographed by real people, shared under free licences.
They are the evidence that this technology exists on desks and rooftops today, not only
in diagrams.
本页有两类图像：所有示意图都是页面用代码自己绘制的；
硬件一课中的照片是真人拍摄的真实物品，以自由许可证共享。
它们证明这项技术今天就存在于桌面和屋顶上，而不只存在于示意图里。
Meshtastic node with antenna and weatherproof box — photo by -stk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via
Wikimedia Commons.
LoRa mesh node mounted on a pole (with an unrelated action camera below it) — photo by
Tessa Bury, CC BY 4.0, via
Wikimedia Commons.
LoRa radio module (Semtech SX1278) with antenna and wires — photo by Cnd
(English Wikipedia), CC0 public domain, via
Wikimedia Commons.
Kantronics KPC-9612 Plus packet-radio terminal node controller — photo by
Adamantios, CC BY-SA 3.0, via
Wikimedia Commons.
Amateur radio station (Kenwood TS-430S with antenna tuner and SWR meter) — photo by
ChrisRuvolo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via
Wikimedia Commons.
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B — photo by Laserlicht, CC BY-SA 4.0, via
Wikimedia Commons.
SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E pocket LoRa node — photo by XoMEoX, CC BY 4.0, via
Wikimedia Commons.
