Host Your Website on the Mesh
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 how about the people who grabbed the first dot coms in 1995.
There’s a window like that again right now, and most people don’t even know it’s open.
NomadNet is a network of pages, communities, and messaging that runs entirely without the internet. No servers. No hosting bills. No cloud.
No one who can take your page down, throttle your traffic, or sell your data. It works over radio waves, LoRa, TCP/IP, Bluetooth… whatever path it can find between nodes.
Right now, the number of people who have a presence on it is small. But that’s about to change. This is your chance to master the territory. To be there first. Before everyone else.
What does “having a space” on NomadNet 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. Your page loads in their browser just like any website.
Except it isn’t like any website. It’s yours in a way that no website actually is.
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.
And right now, 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 — you have to figure things out, there aren’t many tutorials, the community is small. 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. Creating your own page takes a little more effort, but not much. We’ll walk through the whole thing right here — and we’ve even written setup scripts to take the tedious parts off your hands.
The infrastructure is maturing too. There are 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.
Step 1 : 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.
Download Nomad NetBrowser from nodestar.net or from the Codeberg repository.
Linux (Debian/Ubuntu): Download the .deb package and run
sudo dpkg -i nomad-netbrowser_0.2.0_amd64.debWindows: Download and run the installer and follow the wizard
From source:
pip install rns nomadnet lxmf flask && python3 nomadbrowser.py
Once 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.
Now you’re technically on the network, but you’re not connected to any other nodes yet. Let’s fix that.
Step 2 : 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. The config syntax is simple but fiddly to get right manually.
Option A — Use the setup script (recommended)
»> Download setup-reticulum-config.py and run it:
python3 setup-reticulum-config.pyThe script will detect your config file location automatically, back up any existing config before touching it, walk you through adding one or more backbone nodes, and 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 at ~/.reticulum/config on Linux/macOS, or C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Reticulum\config on Windows. Open it and add a TCPClientInterface block under [interfaces]:
[[My Backbone Node]]
type = TCPClientInterface
enabled = yes
target_host = the.node.hostname
target_port = 4242Either way: save the file, restart Nomad NetBrowser, then paste this hash into the address bar and hit GO to confirm you’re live:
Node Star: 9a5548134799cfb6e9f60decc8708bc1
If a page loads, you’re on the mesh.
Step 3 : Turn Your Computer Into a Node
Browsing is great. Having your own page is better.
To host pages on NomadNet, you need to run the NomadNet node software. Install it with pip:
pip install nomadnetThen run it:
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 it somewhere safe.
By default, your node serves pages from ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/pages/. Pages are written in a simple markup language called Micron.
Step 4 : 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 three-page site ready to browse and edit immediately.
»> Download setup-nomadnet-pages.py and run it:
python3 setup-nomadnet-pages.pyThis creates three ready-to-go pages in your NomadNet pages directory:
index.mu — Your home page, the first thing visitors see
about.mu — An about page to introduce yourself and your setup
links.mu — A links page pre-loaded with community 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.
Step 5 : Get listed
A node that no one knows about is just a server running in the dark. Get yourself on the map.
Submit your node to the Node Star directory at nodestar.net/node-submit. You’ll need your destination hash, a display name, and a short description of what’s on your node. Once listed, you show up to anyone browsing the directory and to other Nomad NetBrowser users.
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 as you broadcast your presence across the network.
Step 6 : Send Your First Message
NomadNet isn’t just pages, it’s also a messaging system! LXMF (Lightweight Extensible Message Format) is the protocol, and it 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 this like an email address), compose messages to anyone on the network, send via Direct (recipient online) or Propagated (store-and-forward, works even offline), and receive messages from anyone who knows your address.
The mesh has a real messaging community. Introduce yourself. Tell people what’s on your node. It’s early enough that people genuinely welcome new arrivals.
Your Identity is Portable
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.
The identity file lives at ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identity for Nomad NetBrowser, ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/identity for NomadNet, and ~/.sideband/storage/identity for Sideband on Linux/macOS. On Windows, replace ~ with C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\.
Moving your identity between apps is just a file copy:
cp ~/.nomadnetwork/storage/identity ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identityRestart the app you just copied into. It will load the new identity and present the same destination hash and LXMF address as the original.
Back it up. Right now.
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.
cp ~/.nomad-netbrowser/identity ~/Documents/nomad-identity-backupOnce your node is listed in directories and people have your hash in their address books, that hash is your persistent presence on the mesh. Protect it accordingly.
Going Further : 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 is 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.
Quick Reference Links
Nomad NetBrowser (Linux .deb): nodestar.net
Nomad NetBrowser (Windows installer): nodestar.net
Nomad NetBrowser (source): codeberg.org/node-star/nomad-netbrowser
NomadNet node software:
pip install nomadnetConfig setup script: nodestar.net/setup-reticulum-config.py
Sample site script: nodestar.net/setup-nomadnet-pages.py
Backbone node map: rmap.world
Submit your node: nodestar.net/node-submit
Node Star directory: nodestar.net/directory
Starter node to visit: Node Star —
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.
Nomad NetBrowser is a free, open-source project by Node Star. Source code at codeberg.org/node-star/nomad-netbrowser. If this was useful, consider supporting on Ko-fi.