This gets at the heart of the matter: "mesh networking" means a bunch of different things. It started out meaning a network composed of mobile devices with omni

This gets at the heart of the matter: "mesh networking" means a bunch of different things. It started out meaning a network composed of mobile devices with omnidirectional antennas, running an ad-hoc routing protocol. This is probably why OP said it has limits, as such a network will be slow and lose a lot of bandwidth with every hop. These days, it's mostly a phrase used when people are excited about networking technologies.