To determine the end-to-end throughput capacity of IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks, existing works used a simplistic approach to divide the 1-hop throughput capacity by the number of contending links in the bottleneck region, which has is limited in terms accuracy, and relies on complicated non-linear equations. This makes it impractical to solve for a large number of hops. This paper presents an optimization methodology to analytically calculate the end-to-end throughput capacity of IEEE 802.11-based chain-topology wireless networks. The calculation considers the interference due to neighboring nodes and assesses the impact of hidden node collision as well as multi-rate terminals (i.e., nodes can transmit at different rates) on throughput capacity. The proposed methodology provides a very accurate calculation of the end-to-end throughput capacity when compared to existing works, and yet, is more practical to implement. With extensive simulation experiments, the study verifies the analysis and validates the proposed methodology.