WiFi-based Long Distance (WiLD) networks with links as long as 50–100 km have the potential to provide connectivity at substantially lower costs than traditional approaches. However, real-world deployments of such networks yield very poor end-to-end performance due to two reasons. First, the current 802.11 MAC protocol has fundamental shortcomings when used over long-distances. Second, WiLD networks can exhibit high and variable loss characteristics, thereby severely limiting end-to-end throughput. This talk describes the design, implementation and evaluation of WiLDNet, a system that overcomes these two problems and provides enhanced end-to-end performance in WiLD networks. To address the protocol shortcomings, WiLDNet makes several essential changes to the 802.11 MAC protocol, but continues to rely on standard WiFi network cards. To better handle losses and improve link utilization, WiLDNet uses an adaptive loss-recovery mechanism using FEC and bulk acknowledgements. Based on a real-world deployment, WiLDNet provides a 2–5 fold improvement in TCP/UDP throughput (along with significantly reduced loss-rates) in comparison to the best throughput achievable by conventional 802.11 MAC. WiLDNet can also be configured to adapt to a range of end-to-end performance requirements (bandwidth, delay, loss, jitter).