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Glossary

Terms NetRoll uses, including the ones that carry a specific meaning inside the app. Where a term is ambiguous in general amateur-radio usage, the NetRoll meaning given here is the one the documentation always uses.

Which of several candidate words the code and the docs actually use is fixed on the vocabulary page; this one says what the words mean.

Amateur radio

Term Definition
ADIF Amateur Data Interchange Format. The file format logging programs exchange contacts in. NetRoll exports the net from the net-control perspective.
Band The frequency band a net runs on. Stored as a structured value, used by discovery filters.
Callsign An operator's assigned identifier. On NetRoll it's self-asserted and unverified against license records.
Check-in One station's participation in a session. In NetRoll, one roster entry with a full record attached.
CTCSS / DCS Repeater sub-audible tone systems. Recorded in a net's repeater details.
Grid Maidenhead grid locator. Validated on input.
Mode How the net operates — phone, CW, digital, FM, repeater. Shapes the signal-report format.
Net A coordinated on-air meetup where stations check in and follow a net-control-moderated agenda.
NCS Net Control Station. The operator running the net. A NetRoll session has exactly one active NCS.
Precedence Message priority on a traffic net: Routine, Priority, or Emergency.
Relay A station that passes check-ins for operators net control can't hear. The word means three distinct things in NetRoll — see the three rows below.
Relay (the act) What happens on the air: one station hears another that net control cannot, and passes their traffic along.
Relay (the role) A grantable session role — the lowest staff tier, permitted to log check-ins on this session. It is an account, and holding it says nothing about whether any particular check-in was relayed. See Roles and permissions.
Relayed by (the field) A per-check-in record of which station passed that entry's traffic, kept as a callsign beside the entry. It is a station, not an account — the relaying station usually has no NetRoll account at all. A Logger sitting beside net control can record that W1ABC relayed a station, and an account holding the Relay role can log a check-in nobody relayed. Distinct from the entry's way in, which records how the traffic travelled rather than who passed it. Added 2026-09-02.
Roll call A net type where net control works a list in order, as opposed to an open net where stations call in freely.
RS / RST Signal report formats. RS for phone, RST for CW.
QSY To change operating frequency. In NetRoll, retuning one of a live session's ways in — a net can be reachable several ways at once, and each carries its own frequency.

NetRoll concepts

Term Definition
Net definition The reusable description of a net: title, description, band, mode, geography, repeater details, category, type. Versioned — editing increments the version.
Occurrence One scheduled dated instance of a net, generated from its schedule. Appears in the upcoming list.
Session One live run of a net. Snapshots the definition when it starts and renders from that snapshot for its whole life.
Snapshot (session) The definition fields copied into a session at start. Why editing a net never disturbs a net already running.
Snapshot (transport) The folded state plus latest seq sent once on a fresh WebSocket connect.
Discovery The public landing surface: the active-now hero plus the filterable upcoming list.
Listed The default visibility. The net appears in discovery.
Unlisted The net never appears in discovery. Reachable only through its link token.
Link token A non-guessable token in a net's permalink URL. Every net has one, whatever its visibility. Not derived from the net's id.
Favorite A per-account marker putting a net in "My nets".
Roster The ordered list of check-ins on a session.
Roster memory Per-net memory of stations that have checked in before, used to prefill returning stations.
Working station The station net control is working right now. At most one at a time, shown to everyone as the working cursor.
Round One pass through the roster taking comments and traffic. Repeatable without losing prior notes.
Source badge Shows how an entry got there: Staff-entered or Self.
Staying status Whether a station is staying for comments or is in and out.
Soft lock A short sliding lease on a check-in while an operator edits it. Others see the row read-only.
Your-turn indicator The marker on a participant's own row when they're next up.

Real-time and technical

Term Definition
Event One recorded fact in a session, named noun.verb in the past tense — checkin.added, session.closed.
Event log The ordered, append-only record of a session. Serves as the live stream, the resume source, the audit trail, and the export source.
seq The per-session monotonic sequence number on each event. Also the client's resume cursor.
Fold Deterministic application of events in seq order to derive state.
Delta A single event pushed to connected clients as it's appended.
Optimistic write The originating client's own pending entry, shown before the server confirms it. Other viewers never see it.
Connection status live, catching up, or out of sync — always shown as colour, icon, and label together.
Net paused Not a connection problem. Net control's heartbeat stopped, so the roster is frozen and writes suspended.
Port A trait declared in the pure domain crate.
Adapter An implementation of a port — Postgres, SMTP, HTTP egress.
Egress client The single SSRF-guarded outbound HTTP client all external calls go through.
KEK The instance key-encryption key wrapping stored QRZ credentials. Injected at runtime, never in Postgres or backups.
Hero instance The instance N1CCK operates at netroll.n1cck.radio. Operated on a best-effort basis with no availability guarantee — no SLA is offered. Self-hosters need none of its infrastructure.

Terms NetRoll deliberately avoids

Avoided Use instead Why
"Net" for a live run Session A net is the recurring thing; a session is one run of it.
"Admin" for a net owner Owner Admin means platform admin, a different axis entirely.
"User" in prose You, or operator Documentation addresses the reader directly.
"Delete" for closing a net Close, or archive Closing appends an event; nothing is destroyed.

See also