(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
This technology is intended for ‘direct’ peer-to-peer links and is being used for a few applications like phone to TV video streaming. It’s not really a P2P technology in that one device always becomes the equivelent of a normal ‘AP’. It makes it difficult to scale to larger topologies.
It’s new, but hopefully we’ll be seeing rapid incorporation into products. For a change, the specifications are free and worth a browse. The P2P discovery model is intentionally blinded to a degree by the use of truncated hashes of the ‘service names’ (6 octets). P2P data exchanges are possible pre-association (no connection overhead).
Paul
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]"