Receivers for wireless local area networks based on the IEEE 802.11b standard are required to operate well in heavy multipath, as well as additive noise impairments. This paper discusses a practical approach to combined equalizing and decoding for IEEE 802.11b systems, based on the Fano sequential decoding algorithm. Simulation results are presented demonstrating the greatly improved performance attained using this algorithm to the performance obtained using separate equalization and decoding blocks. This method has been implemented in TI's ACX100 chip. Measured laboratory results are presented that demonstrate superior throughput results obtained from this device compared with throughputs obtained by competitive devices available on the market.