Introduction to WAP

Surfing the Web with a mobile phone

Mobile devices are gaining a footing in the Internet world. It is already possible to browse the Internet with mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), hand-held computers, laptops, wearable computers, communicators, mobile phones, and other mobile devices. Because of the widely varying capabilities of mobile devices, in terms of display size, storage, processing power and bandwidth, the multimedia HTML content of the Internet have to be modified into a suitable format for wireless equipment.

What is WAP?

WAP, Wireless Application Protocol, is the new technology that enables web-based services on a wireless network. It is a open specification and not controlled by any single company. The specification defines protocols for application, session, transaction, security and transport layers. The specification has been widely accepted and adopted.

To access a server the client sends requests to a WAP Gateway. The Gateway translates the requests and sends them to the server which provides the requested information.

Why WAP?

The bandwidth of todays mobil network is relatively low compared to wired modem connections. There is a need for a more effective way of data transmission than for PC based Internet connections. Another difference is that the display of a wireless device is often much smaller that a PC monitor and the number of keys used for entering commands is limited.

Before the WAP specification was introduced, different manufacturers used different technologies to bring Internet to mobile devices. In the future, mobile devices and service systems that use WAP will be able to interoperate. Whereas TCP/IP technology is used in the Internet arcitecture, the WAP technology will be used in wireless networks.

The number of mobil phone users is growing faster than the number of PC users with an Internet connection. In the future a lot of todays Internet services will also be available to users with WAP phones or WAP comupters.

What is WML?

WAP content is produced using the Wireless Markup Language WML and WMLScript. WML is similar to HTML and is used to create pages to be shown on a WAP micro-browswer. A WAP micro-browser is embedded in WAP phones and interprets WML. It works in the same way as a web-browser in a PC interprets HTML. Both the markup language and the scripting language are designed to be used with small and mobile devices. The protocol is also designed to minimize the required bandwidth.

Users of WAP

There will be other users of WAP than the people surfing the Internet form their mobile phone. These users are Internet Service Providers offering a gateway to the Internet, Content Providers offering WWW applications and pages as well as Internet Developers producing Web pages. In this paper we discuss WAP from each of these user's point of view. We take up what WAP means to these three different groups and why WAP could be important to them.

What services will there be?

All services where only limited graphics and text is required. Applications such as banking, news, e-mail, booking, traffic information etc. are well suited for WAP.