Sputnik's been flushed into the open: turn a PC into an authenticated gateway, become part of the mesh, share your network, use it for a fee (free for now): Doc Searls blasted me a note about these guys. I haven't had time to absorb the shock of their tiny beep orbiting our known Wi-Fi world. Sputnik software turns a PC into an access point and uses firewall, quality of service, and other components to protect the local network and give priority to local users (and other Sputnik roamers, from what I can tell). This is viral software: if you establish a Sputnik node, you get free access to the rest of the network. More as it develops.