WAP and existing Internet standards

Internet standards, such as HTML, HTTP, TLS and TCP, are inefficient over mobile networks. Internet standards were made for transferring large amounts of mainly text based information. HTML pages generally cannot be displayed in an effective and user-friendly way on small size screens, and navigation around and between screens is difficult. Services for mobile devices using these protocols are often slow and difficult to use. HTTP and TCP are not optimised for the intermittent coverage, long latencies and limited bandwidth associated with wireless networks. The TLS security standard requires many messages to be exchanged between client and server, something that results in a very slow response for the user with wireless transmission latencies.

Although the existing Internet standards are not suited for mobile devices, WAP is not going in a fundamentally different direction than the Internet standards. In fact, WAP is based on Internet standards, such as HTTP and TLS, but have been optimised for the unique constraints of the wireless environment.

WAP utilise binary transmission for greater compression of data, and is optimised for long latency and low to medium bandwidth. WAP sessions can handle intermittent coverage and operate over a wide variety of wireless transports using IP where possible and other optimised protocols where IP is impossible. The WML is made to be use with small screens. It is easy to navigate without a full keyboard. WML has built-in scalability from two-line text displays through to the full graphic screens of smart phones and communicators. In addition, the WAP architecture was designed so that it is possible for standard off-the-shelf Internet servers to provide services to mobile devices. When communicating with mobile devices, WAP uses many Internet standards such as XML, UDP and IP.