# Glossary of terms

#### Bridging:
The ability for messages authored by a node in a mesh network to reach an internet relay server.

- **Weak bridging**: the destination is also in the mesh, and syncs with the internet relay server after receiving the message via mesh
- **Strong bridging**: the destination is outside the mesh, but the internet relay server still knows how to route the mesh-originated message to its destination
- **Pond-hop bridging**: the message originates in a mesh, its destination is a node in a different, separate mesh, and it passes through a relay server in between. *We are not doing this.*

#### Flooding (protocol):
a protocol that floods the network with each packet to make sure it gets to its destination

#### Internet, the:
The standard Internet, plus p2panda's and iroh's relay and bootstrap servers -- in other words, all the infrastructure that would still exist if Dash Chat did not exist.

#### Playtest:
external test milestone with community partners

#### Routing (protocol):

distinct from flooding, extra work is done to find a reasonable path(s) from source to destination

#### Push Without Internet BadForBattery

Used to be called "Emergency Mode"

#### National Intranets:

A network condition which is a special case of *The Internet* with limited infrastructure. The following are included:

- iroh's Bittorrent DHT peer discovery and mDNS discovery
- p2panda
- direct-only iroh connections
- emergency mode

What's missing compared to The Internet is:

- push notification servers
- iroh's relay servers
- maybe DC Relay servers

In other words, in the worst case, we have no message relaying (sender and recipient have to be online for 1:1 messages) and depending on the network conditions sometimes connections may not be able to be established due to the lack of iroh relays. However, we may have people inside the splinternet who are able to set up a Dash Relay Server.

#### Test:
internal test milestone for our team

#### Sender:
the device that created a given message and the devices that are linked to that device.

#### Recipient:
recipients devices for a given message.

#### Intermediary:
non-recipient devices that help transmit the message to second party devices.

Previously known as peer relay.

#### Peer Discovery
process of finding and connecting to all the peers that are subscribed to the same topic IDs as a given peer.
> TODO: confirm this definition @maackle @rmwNR3nFRVWlD_HYf8h2UQ

#### Message Servers (previously Mailbox servers)
Servers that allow messages to be relayed asynchronously when recipients are offline.

#### Internet Message Servers
Internet accessible message servers.

#### Local Message Servers
Message servers available on LANs that can be automatically discovered and used by the mobile app.