# Reticulum network stack 70 Hacker News commenters recommended Reticulum network stack and 27 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Encrypted, transport-agnostic network stack that runs over LoRa, WiFi, Bluetooth and more. The most common caveat is limited bandwidth and weak protection against abuse. ## Why people recommend it - Works over many transports (5 comments): "Can route over just about any medium (piggyback IP, Lora, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, microwave P2P, anything)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235005)) "because the protocol is transport agnostic, there are a lot of interfaces to the public reticulum net" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883656)) "The protocol is fairly simple, encrypted by default, and works over lots of interesting transports." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45870537)) - Encrypted by default, cryptographic IDs (4 comments): "The protocol is fairly simple, encrypted by default, and works over lots of interesting transports." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45870537)) "a proper overlay network that provides encryption and cryptographic IDs instead of domains" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649922)) "Essentially it’s encrypted internet/networking over any type of network including LoRa." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48606159)) - Thorough spec and documentation (4 comments): "The full protocol spec is there, I built mine from this without even touching the reference implementation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49359188)) "Reticulum is actually ahead of the curve by having a ready to use PDF manual you can download" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693468)) "it is a very well-thought out approach to distributed networking at the protocol layer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47879392)) - Peer-to-peer alternative to the web (3 comments): "I'm very excited about a future that abandons the web and builds on reticulum" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649339)) "the reticulum protocol in general as a peer-to-peer alternative to www" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368058)) "I personally support initiatives like Reticulum/NomadNet, I2P, the Gemini protocol" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50238445)) ## What people warn about - Immature ecosystem, few complete implementations (4 comments): "It's really cool, but as far as I know there's no complete C++ implementation for embedded platforms" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45871212)) "Reticulum is not worth getting into, the utilities and general infrastructure just isn’t there yet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331121)) "Reticulum feels like an eternal "one day will be great" project but we keep waiting and waiting." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095688)) - Little bandwidth management, flood risk (3 comments): "Reticulum has no bandwidth management. If your node or the whole local area is flooded with traffic from the rest of the network there is nothing you can do." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696775)) "mainly just different protocol parameters allowing Reticulum to work on really slow links, but also wastes performance on really fast links" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49270951)) "over radio the bandwidth is so limited that what you can realistically send are just messages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798364)) - Weak protection against abuse (3 comments): "A bigger problem with Reticulum is that it does not appear to offer robust protection against abuse." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49328505)) "enforces decentralization and abuse/advertisement/... inherently doesn't scale" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48389242)) "a few observer nodes will be able to see which repeaters the message first entered the network from" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49325776)) - Not general purpose, narrow scope (2 comments): "Reticulum is not a general purpose protocol-agnostic data transfer network into which you can plug anything." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46697320)) "It doesn't seems like «Fully self-configuring multi-hop routing over heterogeneous carriers» advertised by this project, rather opposite." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46704715)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Yggdrasil](https://hackerapproved.com/p/yggdrasil.md): 24 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Reticulum network stack", https://hackerapproved.com/p/reticulum/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).