Participant Relationship Protocol

Archived criterion

F25-GN: Pending

Archived previous-definition assessment — revision 5.73. Retired in 5.82; excluded from the active matrix and counts. This historical verdict is not a current assessment.

Historical wake-traffic inventory (cutoff retired)

Rationale

The GNUnet 0.20.0 CADET wire inventory now distinguishes connection creation, authenticated tunnel key exchange, channel opening and useful data. ConnectionCreate includes a connection ID, monotime fields/signature and the whole peer path; the connection source sets/signs monotime in the applicable creation branch. TunnelKeyExchange carries ephemeral and ratchet public keys; TunnelKeyExchangeAuth additionally carries a KDF proof. ChannelOpen and its acknowledgement are separate structures, followed by application data and optional reliable-delivery acknowledgements inside encrypted tunnel messages. The legacy UDP plugin adds its own message header, reserved field and sender identity, and has fragmentation machinery. Additional lower-layer controls are now located in the selected release. Legacy TRANSPORT validation uses a challenge PING and a signed PONG with expiration and a variable address suffix. CORE send_key explicitly sends ephemeral key material plus an encrypted PING, with a PONG response path. Its initial key retry interval is ten seconds and periodic rekey interval twelve hours. CORE EncryptedMessage adds its own header, IV seed, full hash MAC, sequence/reserved fields and timestamp around higher-layer traffic. These cannot be omitted from a CADET-only packet inventory.

Assessment method

Source-path inspection and independent protobuf size calculation; no protocol execution

Source context

Pinned Meshtastic source and GNUnet 0.20.0 release; reviewed 2026-10-22

Outstanding qualification

Count the executed message sequence, not just one key-exchange header. For a bounded direct-neighbor candidate using the supplied HELLO contact, establish whether/how R5N and peerinfo traffic cross the measured interface; retained configuration does not preserve expired sessions. Add legacy TRANSPORT validation and connection setup, CORE key exchange and framing, CADET connection/KX/channel messages, final useful data, acknowledgements, UDP plugin envelopes/fragmentation, IPv4/Ethernet and neighbor repair. Verify message multiplicity and timer conditions in the chosen no-loss configuration before comparing with 65,536 bytes. Do not substitute newer TNG/AEAD message layouts for the selected 0.20.0 legacy UDP profile. No measured or complete documentary bound yet; F25 remains Pending. Include the discovered TRANSPORT PING/PONG and CORE key/PING/PONG exchanges, CORE message-type advertisement/confirmation, and the variable transport-address suffix. Verify retry timing against actual successful establishment; the 24-hour silence must not reuse a CORE session simply because identity keys are retained. The located timer values and structures are source evidence, not a completion-time or total-byte bound.

Public sources

Editorial evidence references

The following identifiers refer to research records not included in this public package; they are not public links.