Glossary

Terms B2 adds on top of the rete/mesh/cluster vocabulary. Each term is a heading, so it can be referenced by anchor (e.g. glossary#rra).

RRA

Radio Resource Allocation — the function of deciding how radio resources (spectrum/channels, time, transmit power, spatial reuse/beams) are used across the rete. Spans all three decision-authority layers: operator-signed bounds (regulatory), a Coordinator RRA extension (semi-persistent), node fast-path (per-slot/instantaneous). Applies to both MAC families — a contention medium still benefits from power/channel/spatial decisions.

Scheduler

The mechanism inside a scheduled MAC that assigns transmission opportunities (slots, resource blocks). A scheduler implements a slice of RRA for scheduled MACs; it is not the whole of RRA. In Florete the scheduler splits explicitly: the slow path (provisioning options — frame plans, slot maps, semi-persistent grants) lives in the Coordinator's RRA extension; the fast path (per-slot selection among provisioned options) lives in the vendor's radio driver. Contention MACs have no scheduler, yet RRA still applies to them.

Contention MAC

Medium access decided locally by carrier sensing and backoff — CSMA, e.g. 802.11 DCF. No allocator exists.

Scheduled MAC

Medium access follows explicit resource allocation (TDMA slots, OFDMA resource blocks); implies a scheduler somewhere.

Slot

A scheduled transmission opportunity: a time slot in TDMA, a time-frequency resource block in OFDMA. B2 docs use "slot" generically for both, avoiding standard-specific terms (LTE's "TTI" and kin). "Per-slot" means the fastest decision granularity of a scheduled MAC.

Semi-persistent allocation

Resource assignments valid across many frames, revised at ctrl-plane timescale (seconds); the Coordinator-side share of scheduled-MAC RRA.

Slot clock

The µs-class clock disciplining a scheduled MAC's frame and slot boundaries — purely relative phase plus a shared frame counter, no absolute time. Lives in the radio module, below R10; one per sync domain. One of the two clock domains of Time Synchronization; design: Slot Clock. The other domain is the network clock.

Network clock

Rete-wide time (ms-class): certificate validity, timestamps of telemetry reports — the radio-level events inside them are stamped in slot-clock units. A per-rete virtual clock maintained by the agent (the host OS clock is never touched), referenced to the Coordinator's Time service and disciplined over the existing mTLS channel; time updates are bounded ctrl decisions. Design: Network Clock. Never disciplines a slot clock; the mapping between the two is telemetry. See Time Synchronization.

Sync domain

The set of nodes sharing one slot clock — frame phase and frame numbering — over a radio medium. Independently synchronized groups that meet are partitions of a domain and merge by the source-priority ladder (Slot Clock).

Time source / time rank

A node's time source is the neighbor it tracks its slot clock against; time rank is a single ordered value encoding the root's source class (high-order — the priority ladder folded in) and quality-weighted distance from the reference, rank 0 (low-order). Sources and ranks are Coordinator-provisioned ctrl state (with local selection among provisioned sources) or, in fallback, locally derived from beacons by lowest audible rank; rank monotonicity — never sync to a source of rank ≥ your own — keeps the time-source graph loop-free and locally verifiable. See Slot Clock.

Holdover

Free-running on the local oscillator after losing every time source, with a drift bound growing over time; guards widen with the bound until the schedule is no longer trustworthy. Step 3 of the slot-clock degradation ladder; the network clock has its own, gentler holdover (ppm-scale drift, tolerated for days).

Ranging

Measuring propagation delay to a neighbor via a two-way MAC-level exchange, to compensate transmit timing (cellular's timing advance). A radio primitive below R10, run at join and re-run under mobility; the one part of slot sync that passive listening cannot provide. See Slot Clock.

Node fast-path

The node-local µs–ms layer of the decision-authority model: decisions too fast for any coordinator. They live in the data-plane components — the mesh-vertex (path failover/FRR), the link-vertex and the radio driver/module (per-slot radio decisions) — while flor agent (the mgmt/ctrl receiver and supervisor) makes none of them. See Radio MACs > Node-side RRA placement.

Single-rank network

No fixed infrastructure/user-equipment asymmetry (contrast LTE eNB/UE): every node runs the same stack, and coordination roles are movable between nodes. See Radio MACs.

Supernode

A node comprising multiple computing hosts joined by an internal network (e.g. in-vehicle Ethernet), possibly with several radio modules — an HLD concept. B2's degenerate case is a single host; see Radio MACs > Evolution.

Radio module

The vendor's radio hardware — the transceiver itself (possibly with on-board FPGA/firmware). Always means hardware in B2 docs.

Radio driver

All vendor software driving a radio module and exposing the R10 host interface — the fast-path scheduler included, for scheduled MACs. How it splits across kernel, userspace, and firmware is a vendor implementation detail; "driver" here does not mean "kernel driver".

Medium adapter

The connection-manager component that binds a Florete vertex to a medium: a link vertex's single udp adapter in C0, the adapter speaking R10 for a custom radio. Florete-side software — distinct from any hardware "adapter".

Attachment point

Where a node meets a medium — Saltzer's point of attachment (PoA, RFC 1498). In Florete vertices are attachment points (stated in the HLD): the link-vertex is the mesh-vertex's attachment point, and the notion recurses — a vertex's attachment points are the lower-layer vertices it uses (an interrete mesh-vertex's are the rete mesh-vertices beneath it). Wire-level labels name attachment points, not nodes (see Link Contract > Link identity & discovery); such labels exist only at the base medium, never at higher recursion boundaries (see Attachment Labels).

Introductor

The Coordinator's admission service (B1 sketch): admits new or returning nodes within an operator-signed admission-policy bound — dynamic membership. In B2 it exists only as the future consumer of discovery (R6): admission stays operator-driven (enrollment), and which nodes may beacon/answer is governed by mgmt/ctrl fields instead of a placed Introductor service.

Hidden terminal

Two senders outside each other's carrier-sense range colliding at a common receiver; the classic CSMA pathology that centralized power/spatial control (B2's minimal RRA) mitigates.

Link budget

The per-node bound on resources spendable on links (for radio, a hard resource limit), constraining the Coordinator's topology computation.

ARQ

Automatic Repeat reQuest — link-level retransmission turning a lossy medium into one with bounded residual loss (contract R2). Hybrid variants (HARQ, as in LTE/5G) combine retransmission with forward error correction in hardware; whether a radio uses plain ARQ or HARQ is the vendor's design choice — the contract only bounds the residual loss.