Has anyone heard of an idea to use individual WiFi routers to communicate in a mesh net?  (Or, at least differently than it may have been done before.)   If you look at a map of WiFi routers (www.wigle.net) in any given area, you will see that the vast majority of routers are physically close to many other routers, certainly close enough to communicate with each other, and ultimately over a long distance.  A crowd-sourced communication system, one that wouldn't necessarily go through the Internet backbone.  Conceptually related to the Bittorrent system.    I just  found this:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct

            Jim Bell

From that URL:

"Wi-Fi Direct, initially called Wi-Fi P2P, is a Wi-Fi standard enabling devices to easily connect with each other without requiring a wireless access point.[1] It is usable for everything from internet browsing to file transfer,[2][3] and to communicate with more than one device simultaneously at typical Wi-Fi speeds.[4] One advantage of Wi-Fi Direct is the ability to connect devices even if they are from different manufacturers. Only one of the Wi-Fi devices needs to be compliant with Wi-Fi Direct to establish a peer-to-peer connection that transfers data directly between them with greatly reduced setup.[citation needed]
Wi-Fi Direct negotiates the link with a Wi-Fi Protected Setup system that assigns each device a limited wireless access point. The "pairing" of Wi-Fi Direct devices can be set up to require the proximity of a near field communication, a Bluetooth signal, or a button press on one or all the devices. Wi-Fi Direct may not only replace the need for routers, but may also replace the need of Bluetooth for applications that do not rely on low energy.[5]"