Yep, that works (I used to setup corporate networks back in the 2000s).
But you are trusting the operator of each hop along the way.
Are you aware of any "decentralized internet" proposals that do something like that? As far as I know all the alternatives to centralized IP (like cjdns, for example) always make use of some DHT for discovery, which to me sounds like it will never work, but having big routing services maybe could.
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