Internet coverage in rural areas of Ethiopia is extremely limited which, in turn, limits access tornknowledge, education, health, commerce and other important services. As rural areas arerncharacterized by low-income, highly scattered and low population density, traditional approachesrnfor backhauling based on telephone, cellular, satellite or fiber is in general expensive, especially, inrnlow population density and low-income regions like Ethiopia. To address this rural area networkrnaccess problem, this thesis proposes Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)rn802.11n-based point-point technology as a backhauling solution. The thesis shows that, with carefulrnplanning, using high gain antennas and tuning relevant medium access control (MAC) layerrnparameters, inexpensive, off-the-shelf Wi-Fi radios can be viable solution to rural connectivityrnproblem.rnThe work started by assessing limitations of IEEE 802.11-based access point in a long-distancernpoint-to-point setup. Due to the long distance, high gain antennas are required. A pair of parabolicrnreflectors, originally designed for satellite TV reception with their feeders replace with that of Wi-rnFi, are used. The standard IEEE802.11 MAC layer performs poorly in a long-distance step; hence,rnthe necessary MAC layer parameters were changed to fit the long distance requirements. Beforerndeploying the system a link budget analysis had to be conducted for selected sites to predict thernperformance of the system.rnTo demonstrate the appropriateness of this solution a testbed was built and deployed in the premisesrnof Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT) over 128 meters. The testbed is built from a pair ofrnDragino MS14 access points connected to parabolic reflectors of 175 centimeters diameter. Severalrnexperiments were conducted on this testbed to evaluate its performance. The measured resultsrnindicate that at 128 meters distance a maximum throughput of 32.8 Mega bits per second andrnreceived signal power of -72dB was achieved by adjusting antenna height and orientation. Anotherrnexperiment was conducted using Radiomobile link simulation tool to evaluate the performance ofrnthis same system when implemented in a real rural area. The simulation result showed that withrnextensive link planning, the same antenna can give coverage to rural area about 30 kilometers awayrna city. The simulation was conducted between Bishoftu city and a rural location called ChaffeernDonsa.