I've got fond memories of reading "The Little Engine That Could", his article on the wonders of mesh networking, potentially cheaply by flashing Linksys WRT54G with OpenWRT

>...the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac's wireless ISP. Going further, if a bunch of your friends in town had similarly configured WRT54Gs, they could seamlessly work together and put out of business your local telephone company.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040608142623/http://www.pbs.or...