Glossary Of Terms

Glossary Of Terms

F

• Firmware The software that runs on a specific piece of hardware is called firmware. Both the Mesh Node and Mesh Radio have a custom firmware that performs specific tasks and contains other software. Firmware commonly refers to the entire set of software running on a device, as opposed to one piece of it.
• Flash(ing) Refers to the process of writing a new firmware to a device. The process can be simple or complex depending on the manufacturer of the hardware.

L

• LAN: See Wikipedia: Local Area Network

M

• Mesh Network: A mesh network is a peer-to-peer network where there are multiple links between each Mesh Node.
• Mesh Node: Think of a mesh network as a graph. A mesh node is one 'vertex' on that graph. It's the combination of radios and single-board-computers you keep in your home in order to participate in your neighborhood network.
• Mesh Radio Each mesh node uses one or more mesh radios to communicate with other mesh nodes. For simplicity, the radio will sometimes be omitted from diagrams despite being a separate piece of hardware. The job of the mesh radio is to relay traffic between the ethernet plug on the mesh node and a meshing wifi signal.

P

• Peer-to-Peer: Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.

S

• Stock or Stock Firmware is used to describe the preloaded software that comes on a device when purchased from a store. Not all devices have a stock firmware, but it's important to be aware of those that do because flashing steps for our custom firmware can differ depending on whether a device is running stock or has already been flashed to our firmware.

W

• WAN: See Wikipedia: Wide Area Network

Y

• Yggradil The software and protocol we use for forming our mesh. To learn more, visit the Yggdrasil Website