What is Netsukuku

Netsukuku is a computer network that sports a number of beautiful features.

First of all, it achieves its goal of interconnecting people and devices by potentially exploiting the hardware resources of any node of the network, in an efficient manner. Nevertheless, should any set of nodes be disconnected or switched off or misbehave, the network would operate effectively the same. In other words, the network does not rely on any particular set of nodes, such as a backbone that has to be always operating.

This feature is what we mean with the term mesh network.

Second. In a Netsukuku network you just need to turn a device on and you become immediately able to contact anyone everywhere on the network. That is, the rules for routing the packets to its final destination are discovered in a fully automatic manner.

Similarly, when the network topology changes, the network reacts automatically. That is, if the path that is currently the best one to a certain destination becomes disconnected, then the new best path will be promptly and efficiently acknowledged to all the relevant nodes. That is, we do not need an operator that controls the reachability of a node through a certain path and fixes things for us.

This feature is what we call a self-forming, self-healing network.

Third, every node receives a unique address. Furthermore, within in a very short period of time, any other node will know a path to send a message to this new address. That means that everybody can expose a service with its own computer to the whole network.

For this, we say that the network is fully routable.

Fourth, both when the network is small and when the number of nodes in the network grows, the algorithm that the network has to execute is effectively distributed and the tasks for any single node does not become prohibitive, even for devices with low computational resources.

The routing algorithm is highly scalable.

In fact, Netsukuku is a set of software tools that enable every single node to exploit, and enforce himself, the characteristics of such a network.