You remember how it felt to get a Gmail address in 2004 — when you had to know someone to get in, and having one meant something. Or the people who grabbed a two-word domain name in 1995 and are still sitting on it. Or the developers who spun up their first Bitcoin node when you could still mine on a laptop.
There's a window right now, and most people don't even know it's open.
It works over radio waves, LoRa, TCP/IP, Bluetooth — whatever path it can find between nodes. And right now, the number of people who have a presence on it is small enough that you could know most of them by name. That's about to change. This is your chance to be there first.
What Does "Having a Space" Actually Mean?
When you set up a NomadNet node, you get a destination hash — a unique cryptographic address that belongs to you and only you. Not registered with a company. Not tied to an email address or a phone number. Generated from your own cryptographic identity, on your own machine.
That hash is your address on the mesh. Share it and people can visit your page from anywhere on the network — whether they're connected via the internet, a LoRa radio link, a local network, or a radio repeater miles away.
You can put whatever you want on it. A blog. A radio station guide. A local community hub. Technical notes. Fiction. A manifesto. A simple "hello, I'm here." There are no content policies to violate, no algorithm deciding whether your page gets seen. People who know your hash can reach you directly, peer to peer, with end-to-end encryption baked into the protocol.
If you list yourself in the Node Star directory, you'll be one of a few hundred people in the world with a public presence on the mesh. That number is going to grow. It always does.
Why Now?
Every network has a moment where the early adopters get in before the crowd. Before that moment, the barrier feels high. After that moment, everything is easier — but the ground floor is taken.
NomadNet is in that before moment right now.
The technical barrier has dropped dramatically. You no longer need to wrangle a terminal, understand networking stacks, or know what a LoRa radio is. Nomad NetBrowser — a free, open-source app — wraps the whole thing in a regular browser interface. Install it, open it, and you're browsing the mesh.
There are also public backbone nodes you can connect to over the regular internet as a starting point, so you don't need radio hardware to participate. When you're ready to go fully off-grid, the hardware options are there. But you can start today, from your laptop, with nothing but a Wi-Fi connection.
Get on the Network
Before you can have your own page, you need to be able to browse the mesh. That's where Nomad NetBrowser comes in.
Linux install
sudo dpkg -i nomad-netbrowser_0.3.0_amd64.deb
nomad-netbrowserFrom source (any OS)
pip install rns nomadnet lxmf flask
python3 nomadbrowser.pyOnce it's running, open http://localhost:5000 in any browser. You'll see the Nomad NetBrowser interface — an address bar, a node directory, and a navigation panel.
Once the app is running, try pasting this hash into the address bar and hitting GO. If a page loads, your setup is working.
Connect to the Backbone
This is the step most people trip over — and the reason we wrote a script for it. Reticulum creates its own config file the first time you run Nomad NetBrowser. To actually reach other nodes on the mesh, you need to add a connection to a public backbone node.
Option A — Use the setup script (recommended)
python3 setup-reticulum-config.pyDownload: nodestar.net/setup-reticulum-config.py
The script will:
- Detect your config file location automatically (Linux, macOS, or Windows)
- Back up any existing config before touching it
- Walk you through adding one or more backbone nodes
- Write a clean, complete config file ready to go
When it asks for a backbone node host and port, get one from rmap.world — an interactive map of public Reticulum nodes. Click any node marked as a public entrypoint and hit Copy Configuration.
Option B — Edit the config manually
Your Reticulum config lives here:
- Linux / macOS:
~/.reticulum/config - Windows:
C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Reticulum\config
Add a TCPClientInterface block under [interfaces] using a host and port from rmap.world:
[[My Backbone Node]]
type = TCPClientInterface
enabled = yes
target_host = the.node.hostname
target_port = 4242Save the file, restart Nomad NetBrowser, and try the Node Star hash above. If a page loads, you're live on the mesh.
Set Up Your Own Node
Browsing is great. Having your own page is better.
To host pages on NomadNet, you need to run NomadNet itself — the node software that serves µ-pages to visitors.
pip install nomadnet
nomadnetThe first time it runs, NomadNet generates your cryptographic identity and creates a default page structure. Your node's destination hash will be printed to the console — copy this down. This is your permanent address on the mesh.
Keep your destination hash somewhere safe. It's your address on the network. By default, pages are served from ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/pages/ and written in Micron.
Get a Working Site in Two Minutes
You could write your first Micron page from scratch. Or you could let the setup script do it and have a working 3-page site ready to browse and edit immediately.
python3 setup-nomadnet-pages.pyDownload: nodestar.net/setup-nomadnet-pages.py
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
index.mu | Your home page — the first thing visitors see |
about.mu | An about page — introduce yourself and your setup |
links.mu | A links page — pre-loaded with Reticulum resources |
All three pages are fully functional and link to each other. Start NomadNet, paste your destination hash into Nomad NetBrowser, and your site is already live. Then open the .mu files in any text editor and make them yours.
Micron quick reference
Get Listed
Here's where the early adopter payoff kicks in. Submit your node to the Node Star directory.
Right now this list is short. The people on it are the pioneers. A year from now there will be a lot more entries, and yours will have been there from the beginning.
You can also announce yourself directly from Nomad NetBrowser — open the Messages tab and hit Announce. You'll start appearing in other users' Nodes tabs automatically.
Send Your First Message
NomadNet isn't just pages — it's also a messaging system. LXMF (Lightweight Extensible Message Format) works across apps: Sideband on Android and iOS, MeshChat, and any other NomadNet node.
From the Nomad NetBrowser Messages tab, you can:
- See your LXMF address — share it like an email address
- Compose a message to any LXMF address you know
- Send via Direct (recipient online) or Propagated (store-and-forward, works even offline)
- Receive messages from anyone who knows your address
The mesh has a real messaging community. Introduce yourself. It's early enough that people genuinely welcome new arrivals.
Your Identity Is Portable — Take It Everywhere
This is one of the best features of Reticulum and one of the least talked about: your cryptographic identity is just a file, and you can move it anywhere.
Your identity determines your destination hash — your address on the mesh. It's the same address whether you're running NomadNet on a Raspberry Pi, Nomad NetBrowser on a laptop, Sideband on your phone, or any other compatible app. One identity, one address, every platform.
Where the identity file lives
| App | Identity file location |
|---|---|
| Nomad NetBrowser | ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identity |
| NomadNet | ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/identity |
| Sideband (Linux/macOS) | ~/.sideband/storage/identity |
| rnsd / Reticulum | ~/.reticulum/storage/identity |
On Windows, replace ~ with C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\.
Moving your identity between apps
It's just a file copy.
# Copy your NomadNet identity into Nomad NetBrowser
cp ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/identity ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identity
# Or the other way around
cp ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identity ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/identityRestart whichever app you just copied into. It will load the new identity and present the same destination hash and LXMF address as the original.
Your identity file is small (a few kilobytes) and irreplaceable. If you lose it, you lose your destination hash. No one can recover it for you — that's the whole point of cryptographic identity. There is no "forgot my hash" link.
Copy it somewhere safe today:
# Linux/macOS — copy to Documents
cp ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identity ~/Documents/nomad-identity-backup
# Or onto a USB drive
cp ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identity /media/myusb/nomad-identity-backupUsing Sideband on your phone
Sideband is the mobile LXMF client for Android and iOS. It shares the same LXMF address space as NomadNet and Nomad NetBrowser — messages sent to your LXMF address arrive on whichever app is running. Sideband has its own identity export/import in app settings.
Off the Internet Entirely
Everything above works over a regular internet connection as a starting point. But Reticulum was built for the world after the internet — or alongside it, or instead of it.
LoRa radio
A pair of RNode devices or a cheap LoRa32 board lets you connect to the mesh over radio, with no internet required. Line-of-sight links of 10–30km are common. Your node can simultaneously be on the TCP backbone and the LoRa mesh — same identity, same hash, reachable over both.
Raspberry Pi node
A Pi Zero or Pi 4 running NomadNet makes a low-power always-on node. Add a LoRa hat and you've got a mesh radio gateway for around $50. Set one up at home, one at a friend's house, and you have private encrypted communications that work without any infrastructure.
Community mesh
Find local Reticulum operators at rmap.world. A cluster of nodes in the same area? That's a local mesh. You can message your neighbors without the message touching the internet at all.
Your Destination Hash Is Your Address
The internet you grew up with is built on addresses owned by someone else. Your domain name is leased from a registrar. Your email address belongs to Google or Microsoft. Your social media presence exists at the pleasure of a company whose incentives don't align with yours.
Your NomadNet destination hash belongs to you the way a private key belongs to you. It's generated from your cryptographic identity. No one issued it to you, no one can take it away, and it follows your node wherever it runs. Move your node to a different machine, a different country, a different radio frequency — it's still the same address.
That's worth something. And right now, while the network is young, is the best time to get one.
Everything You Need
| What you need | Where to get it |
|---|---|
| Nomad NetBrowser | Linux .deb · Windows .exe · Source |
| NomadNet node software | pip install nomadnet |
| Config setup script | setup-reticulum-config.py |
| Sample site script | setup-nomadnet-pages.py |
| Backbone node config | rmap.world · directory.rns.recipes |
| Reticulum documentation | reticulum.network/manual |
| Submit your node | nodestar.net/node-submit |
| Node Star directory | nodestar.net/directory |
| Node Star (starter node) | 9a5548134799cfb6e9f60decc8708bc1 |
The Floor Is Open.
The early web had a moment where anyone who put up a page was remarkable just for being there. The early internet had a moment where having an email address was a thing people asked about at parties. Those moments always close eventually.
NomadNet's is open right now. Get your node running. Write your page. Share your hash. Get listed.
You'll be able to say you were there before everyone else — and you'll have a destination hash to prove it.