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Network

The Network tab lists what rettui hears on the network; the Status tab shows your identity, your interfaces and the log.

  • Heard announces: the Network tab lists the LXMF peers, NomadNet nodes and propagation nodes you've heard, with their names, addresses, hops and when they were last heard.
  • Names are cleaned: a name someone announces could otherwise pass for another, or spill over the screen. As NomadNet does, rettui drops characters that hide or turn text around (direction overrides, zero-width and private-use ones), reads compatibility forms as the letters they look like (ＡＤＭＩＮ as ADMIN), keeps at most four accents on a letter, makes blank-looking characters and line breaks one space, and keeps 128 characters. Unlike NomadNet, emoji stay. Names heard before this are cleaned as rettui starts. Your own name, and your propagation node's, go out the same way, emoji included, as Sideband and NomadNet send them (the LXMF library rettui uses would drop the emoji, so rettui builds its announces itself).
  • Hearing others takes time: there's no list to download; each peer and node announces on its own schedule, many only every few hours, so a new install's list fills over its first hours. Announcing yourself (A, or Announce in the web UI) lets others find you. While nothing is connected, the empty list says so and points to the getting-started guide.
  • Finding: filter by kind (f), or search by name or address (/), with the matches highlighted. Addresses can be pasted in any common form (<hash>, lxmf@hash, hash:/page/index.mu).
  • Sorting and interfaces: the list is last heard first; s in the TUI (or the order menu in the web UI) sorts it by name or nearest first instead. Each row says which interface its path goes through, when one's known (from the path table, read every half minute), and i (or the interface menu) keeps the list to those through one interface: what's heard over the LoRa radio, say, rather than the internet.
  • Acting on a row: message a peer, browse a node, or use a propagation node for sync, and copy any address.
  • Announces as they're heard: a (or Announces in the web UI) shows every announce in place of the list, as it arrives, of every kind: LXMF peers, NomadNet and propagation nodes, RRC hubs, LXST calls, and whatever else announces on the network (tagged OTHER, with a name when its announce carries one as text). The list keeps one row per peer or node; this shows each announce, with when it was heard, so it's where to see who's announcing how often, or what's on a new interface. It follows the newest; moving up holds it where you are (End, or scrolling to the bottom in the web UI, follows again). Filter by kind (f), search (/) and keep to an interface (i) as in the list; Enter opens what rettui can, and P, T and y find a path, probe and copy. rettui keeps the newest 1000 heard since it started. A burst of announces on an interface that just came up is held back by Reticulum (as it is for every program on it), so some may show up later, or not at all.
  • Paths: to reach a destination, rettui needs a path to it: which interface it goes out on, and through which transport node. Announces bring paths; for one not heard yet, rettui asks for a path, up to three times over a minute (at once, then after 15 and 52 seconds). One request often goes unanswered: it's lost on the way, or reaches a node that hasn't heard of the destination yet. For 45 seconds, Reticulum nodes take further requests for a destination as part of the one they're still working on, so the third request waits until then. Loading a page, connecting to a hub, and sending a message, syncing or pinging all do this; while it goes on, a hub connecting, and a page loading in the TUI, say which request they're on.
  • Stale paths: a path can go stale: the destination moved, or a node on the way went down. When a Link over a known path gets no answer, rettui forgets the path, asks for a fresh one, and tries once more (except for a ping, which times one try).
  • Finding or forgetting a path: in the TUI, P finds the path to the selected row (or to any address typed), and D forgets the selected row's path. In the web UI, Path on each row opens a dialog with the path and Find path, Probe and Forget path buttons, and Find a path… above the list opens it for any address. A path shows as its hops, the transport node it goes through, the interface, and how long it's kept unless heard again ("2 hops via <0a1b2c3d…> on RMAP World, kept for 6 days"). Forget a path that has gone stale, and the next use asks for a fresh one.
  • Probing: T (or Probe) times an answer from the selected destination, as rnprobe does, finding a path first. LXMF addresses prove the packets they get, so they're sent a probe packet ("answered in 182 ms, 2 hops away"). NomadNet nodes, propagation nodes and RRC hubs don't, so rnprobe to one always times out; rettui times setting up a Link to them instead, closed straight away, and says so ("a Link opened in 240 ms").
  • From the command line: rettui path <address> finds and prints a path, -d forgets it, and -t lists every path known; `rettui probe
    ` probes (see [Running](Running.md#commands)). While rettui is the shared instance (the first Reticulum program started with `share_instance` on), these use its paths, and Reticulum's own `rnpath` and `rnprobe` work against it too. - **Status:** the Status tab shows your identity and LXMF address, your first steps until they're taken (see [Running](Running.md#first-steps)), the network state, each interface with its traffic, the last sync, the propagation node you host (if any), and a log. - **Interface trouble:** the log shows why an interface won't connect or dropped, as the Reticulum libraries report it (for example `Interface Dead Link: TCP connect failed: Connection refused`). It also shows when an interface goes offline or comes back online. The same trouble again within five minutes (a connection retrying) is counted rather than logged again, and a Reticulum restart starts the count afresh. `rettui.log` keeps everything. - **What to do about it:** common trouble gets a plain-words hint after the error: a host name that can't be looked up (check the internet connection and the host name), a connection refused (the entry point may be down or the port wrong), no answer (down, or a firewall), no route (no internet), a port already in use (another Reticulum, such as rnsd, or a second rettui), a radio that isn't plugged in, a serial port you may not open (on Linux, the `dialout` group), a device another program has open, no I2P router running, no IPv6 for the Auto interface (common in Docker containers), and an interface that has stopped retrying. The command-line commands print the same lines. - **Interfaces:** the Status tab lists each one, online (●) or not (○), with what it has received (↓) and sent (↑), and what rnstatus shows of it: its rate (for a radio, the air rate), MTU, mode if not *full*, clients (for a server), and announces queued or held back and packets dropped, when there are any. - **Signal:** a [ping](Messaging.md#contacts) says how well the answer was heard (RSSI, SNR and link quality, as rnprobe does) when it came in over a radio that reports it, such as an RNode. So does a message that came in one packet straight from the sender (sent *opportunistically*, as Sideband and others send short messages to someone they have no Link to): 📶 beside it says how it was heard, as Sideband shows it, and it's kept with the message. A message sent over a Link (most direct messages, and any too big for one packet) doesn't show it: the Reticulum library rettui uses doesn't say how a Link's packets were heard. Nor does one from a propagation node, which wasn't heard from the sender. - **Traffic:** the corner of the sidebar, under the interface count, shows how fast data is coming in (↓) and going out (↑) over all interfaces, updated every few seconds. In the web UI, hovering over it shows the totals. Under each interface in the Status tab, a graph shows its own traffic over the last ten minutes (a reading every five seconds), in (↓) and out (↑) against its busiest moment, with how fast it's moving now: bars in the terminal UI, lines in the web UI (in cyan, out magenta). An interface that's been quiet throughout has none. The graphs start when rettui does.