> I don't understand how anyone would expect to gain more bandwidth from a mesh.
Well, if you had an hourglass-shaped mesh network which was congested at the narrow point of the hourglass, and you recruited an extra node that gave you a second link across the narrow point, by adding the node you've doubled the bandwidth between the bulbs of the hourglass - and improved the redundancy.
The problem is a lot of people imagine this will happen every time they add a node, making the whole thing infinitely scalable. Whereas the reality is any time you add a node that isn't crossing the narrow point of the hourglass, the congestion gets worse.
You're talking about a world of P2P and local use.
The reality is that practically everyone is using "wifi mesh technology" as range extender for their own singular internet connection, and the internet connection is the bottleneck for practically everything.
Well, if you had an hourglass-shaped mesh network which was congested at the narrow point of the hourglass, and you recruited an extra node that gave you a second link across the narrow point, by adding the node you've doubled the bandwidth between the bulbs of the hourglass - and improved the redundancy.
The problem is a lot of people imagine this will happen every time they add a node, making the whole thing infinitely scalable. Whereas the reality is any time you add a node that isn't crossing the narrow point of the hourglass, the congestion gets worse.