> Now, for the hobbyist these solutions are harder to implement and that's not nothing,

I'd argue it's everything. A network architecture that requires serious fixed infrastructure should probably be an entirely separate project from the ad-hoc mesh formed solely by cheap battery-powered portable/handheld gadgets. And everyone should be realistic about what "meaningful traffic" is for a network with a default data rate of ~1kbps; it's not reasonable to expect that to support the kind of chatter a busy IRC server would see.