NeighborNet 🌐📡

A resilient, local-first community communications and information network that operates without internet or central servers, built on the Reticulum Network Stack.

NeighborNet is designed for neighborhoods, local communities, and emergency response teams to stay connected when conventional telecom and internet infrastructure fails. It combines an ultra-efficient native cryptographic networking engine written in Rust with a clean, intuitive cross-platform Flutter application.

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🏛 Architecture Overview

NeighborNet operates on an asymmetric, hierarchical topology:

                  ISP / MUNICIPAL NODE (Optional Backbone)
                             │
                    ┌────────┴────────┐
                    │                 │
              Community Pi      Community Pi (Always-on Transport Nodes)
                 /    \             /    \
               PC     Phone        PC    Phone (Edge / Leaf Nodes)

• Asymmetric Roles: Mobile devices (iOS & Android) operate strictly as Edge / Leaf nodes with opportunistic store-and-forward sync to respect OS background suspension and battery limits. Raspberry Pis, home servers, and PCs act as backbone transport/storage relays.
• Underlying Protocol: Reticulum Network Stack (RNS) cryptographic substrate (Ed25519 identity, X25519 link encryption, 128-bit destination hashes).
• Application Layer: Signed Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) for conflict-free, partition-tolerant store-and-forward replication of messages, bulletin posts, and emergency alerts.
• Zero Simulation: No fake or simulated peers. All nodes on the network are real cryptographic entities verified with asymmetric signatures.

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📁 Repository Structure

• neighbornet_core/: Native Rust crate providing:
  • Reticulum cryptography and identity management (reticulum-rs).
  • Automatic UDP broadcast discovery (0.0.0.0:42424).
  • Store-and-forward DAG sync engine.
  • C FFI dynamic library export (neighbornet_core.dll / .so / .dylib).
  • Standalone headless node daemon (neighbornet_node) for Raspberry Pis and headless servers.
• neighbornet_app/: Cross-platform Flutter desktop & mobile application:
  • Real-time reactive Dart FFI bridge.
  • 6 community chat channels (General, Emergency, Neighborhood, Help, Buy/Sell, Technical).
  • Persistent Community Bulletin with urgent/emergency alerts and local filtering.
  • Cryptographic People & Nodes directory.
  • Offline Emergency & Disaster Survival Guides with one-tap SOS broadcast.

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Rust (1.75+ or newer recommended)
• Flutter SDK (3.10+ or newer)

1. Build the Rust Core Library & Daemon

cd neighbornet_core
cargo build --release

To run a headless community relay node (e.g. on a Raspberry Pi or server):

# cargo run --release --bin neighbornet_node -- [port] [node_name] [--transport]
cargo run --release --bin neighbornet_node -- 42424 "Community_Pi_Relay" --transport

2. Run the Flutter App

Copy or link the compiled dynamic library into the app directory or system path, then run:

cd neighbornet_app
flutter pub get
flutter run -d windows    # or macos, linux, android, ios

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🧪 Verification & Automated Tests

All core cryptographic operations, FFI bindings, and store-and-forward network partition sync behaviors are validated by comprehensive automated test suites:

# Run Rust unit, FFI, and partition recovery tests
cd neighbornet_core
cargo test

# Run Flutter FFI bridge and UI tests
cd ../neighbornet_app
flutter test

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.