It seems like this should be easy to do but I haven't heard about it before. Most wifi routers have a usb slot where you could put a memory stick or external hard drive filled with e-books or movies or whatever. Broadcast it unsecured with an appropriate network name and let anyone connect to download stuff.
You wouldn't connect it to the internet, it would just be an access point for the stored drive. You'd probably have to make it read-only so that people don't delete stuff or upload viruses or cp. It seems like it could be used as a node for a mesh network too but I don't know enough about how those operate.
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[–] hwong 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Ya I just checked it out. For some reason I thought they were making a stand alone box, all installed and configed. A buddy had a couple from somewhere, but I see I can load and config my own routers, so I'm still in. and I have a box of those old routers sitting here. Cheers mate!