I was really excited for CJDNS (not to be confused with “Domain Name System”) at one time. It’s a mesh networking protocol. And they’d established an “Internet 2” (as in, a sequel to “The Internet”) based on the CJDNS protocol called “Hyperborea.”

I haven’t heard anything about CJDNS in a good while now. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other efforts looking to do something roughly the same, but I’m not up to date on anything more recent.