[hansjorg]

The main purpose is to have a network without depending on a central ISP.

A good example of a sizable meshnet is the Athens Wireless Metropolitan[1] network which has more than a thousand backbone nodes.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan_Ne...

[norswap]

Ah, I missed the point that this network would eschew the internet totally. I now realize that the top comment and even the excerpt say exactly that.