What Is WAP

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Wireless Communication

Terry Apodaca

Mills Bell

Shannon Ervin

Ty Hammontree

Brad Henderson

ISQS 3349

Data Communications

December 5, 2000

Instructor: Zhangxi Lin

Wireless Communication

By Betty and the GeEks

Wireless application protocol (WAP) is an application environment and set of communication protocols for wireless devices designed to enable manufacturer, vendor, and technology independent access to the Internet and advanced telephony services. WAP is a global standard and is not controlled by any single company. Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and Unwired Planet founded the WAP Forum in the Summer of 1997 with the initial purpose of defining an industry-wide specification for developing applications over wireless communications networks. All of these companies began developing standards independently of each other, but soon they realized that it would make more sense to focus development around a common standard. They all wanted to establish a common format for Internet transfers to mobile telephones, without having to customize the Internet pages for the particular display on every different mobile telephone or personal organizer. With WAP they were able to create such a protocol.

WAP bridges the gap between the mobile world and the Internet, as well as corporate Intranets. This offers the ability to deliver an unlimited range of mobile, value-added services to subscribers, independent of their network, bearer, and terminal. Mobile subscribers can access the same wealth of information from a pocket-sized device just as they can from the desktop. The WAP specifications define a set of protocols in application, session, transaction, security, and transport layers. This enables operators, manufacturers, and applications providers to meet the challenges in advanced wireless service differentiation and fast/flexible service creation. There are now over one hundred members representing terminal and infrastructure manufacturers, operators, carriers, service providers, software houses, content providers, and companies developing services and applications for mobile devices. WAP also defines a Wireless Application Environment (WAE). This environment is aimed at enabling operators, manufacturers, and content developers to develop advanced differentiating services and applications including a microbrowser, scripting facilities, e-mail, World Wide Web (WWW) to mobile handset messaging, and mobile to telefax access. The WAP specifications continue to be developed by contributing members who, through interoperability testing, have brought WAP into the limelight of the mobile data marketplace with fully functional WAP–enabled devices. Based on the Internet model, the wireless device contains a microbrowser while content and applications are hosted on Web servers.

Obviously, you can not gain access to WAP services until you purchase a WAP-enabled device. They are not too expensive, and the telecom experts predict that WAP phones will be better, faster, and cheaper in the next few months. This is a technology that develops fast. The newest WAP phones are more improved compared to yesterday’s phones, which you can buy in your local telecom shop for an attractive price. Forrester is one of the leading independent research firms, which analyzes the future of technological change and its impact on businesses, consumers, and society. This research institute has conducted a research on WAP and predicts that by 2004 one-third of all Europeans, more than 219 million consumers, will regularly use their mobile phones to access Internet services. According to another recent report from Forrester, ninety percent of the e-commerce executives, who were interviewed, plan to launch Internet sites designed for mobile phones with tiny displays and thin connections. Forrester analysts stress the fact that the only thing that can slow down this development is restricting user access. In other words, smart cell phones will become the dominant means of accessing the Internet in the coming years. Web-capable phones will soon make up 79 percent of the unit volume of Internet appliances, according to a report by Semico Research. A survey by New York-based Cap Gemini America and Corechange Inc. of Boston is predicting that Internet access via mobile phones will rise from 3 percent to a massive 78 percent of the U.S. Internet population within 18 months. The research is based on a survey of 1,000 Internet users in the U.S. If the survey is correct then there will be about 72 million WAP phones sold in North America within the year, compared to a projected 45 million PCs.

Today, the Internet is still the best medium for the exchange of information. However, if your only interest is to keep up-to-date on the stock market or the latest sport reviews, WAP is the fastest and easiest way to be online. For e-commerce businesses, WAP is even better for shopping on the Internet. You do not need a big screen to order the latest Metallica CD. All you need to make the order is a WAP phone; click a few times wherever you are, whenever you choose.

In order to make today’s mobile phones as tiny, practical, and easy to carry in your pocket as possible, the WAP screen must be small. You cannot read through the same amount of information as on your computer, and the screen quality is not as good, but you can send pictures with WAP. However, if they are too complicated they will merely appear as blurs. Telecom developers are constantly working on fast and efficient methods of sending information to a mobile phone. The GSM network implemented in most of Europe today is a slow way of sending information. New network technologies are called HSCD (High-Speed Circuit Switch Data) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). They will give faster connections. In a few years most of the European countries will build a new broadband network, called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service). UMTS will allow broadband, packet-based transmission of text, digitized voice, video, and multimedia at data rates up to and possibly higher than 11 megabits per second. Today's cellular systems are mainly circuit-switched, with connections always dependent on circuit availability. Packet-switched connection, using the Internet Protocol (IP), means that a virtual connection is always available to any other end point in the network.

It is much harder to write e-mail on your phone than on your PC. When people start to use their mobile phone to read and write e-mails, the need for a better keyboard will force the producers to develop a better system. The WAP phones you get today have little memory capacity. The development of new WAP services will probably force the hardware producers to develop better memory systems for mobile terminals in the near future. If you have a mobile phone, you have most likely noticed that your phone is a more “private” device than your computer. Your phone is always within reach. You may contact your friends using it and you have a lot of personal information in memory. People that have had to leave their homes in a hurry often tell the press that the items they grabbed on their way out were the wallet and the mobile phone. The latter has almost become a part of their personalities, and people like to express their identities through the design and the price of their phones. Leading phone producers say that they use great amounts of time and money to discover what segment of mobile users prefer what type of phones when it comes to size, color, and functionality. As opposed to your personal computer, the WAP phone will always be within reach. It invites you to order something wherever you are and you can search for information in the middle of a discussion around the café table. You can check your e-mail on the run, and be in touch with the Intranet in your office at anytime.

End users of WAP will benefit from easy, secure access to relevant Internet information and services such as unified messaging, banking, and entertainment through their mobile devices. Intranet information such as corporate databases can also be accessed via WAP technology. Because a wide range of handset manufacturers already supporting the WAP initiative, users will gain significant freedom of choice when selecting mobile terminals and the applications they support. Users will be able to receive and request information in a controlled, fast, and low-cost environment; a fact that renders WAP services more attractive to consumers who demand more value and functionality from their mobile terminals. As the initial focus of WAP, the Internet will set many of the trends of WAP implementation. It is expected that the Internet service providers (ISP’s) will exploit the true potential of WAP. Web content developers will have great knowledge and direct access to the people they attempt to reach. In addition, these developers will likely acknowledge the huge potential of the operators' customer bases; thus, they will be willing and able to offer competitive prices for their content. WAP's push capability will enable weather and travel information providers to use WAP. This push mechanism provides a distinct advantage over the WWW and represents tremendous potential for both information providers and mobile operators.

For wireless network operators, WAP promises to decrease churn, cut costs, and increase the subscriber base both by improving existing services, such as interfaces to voice-mail and prepaid systems, and facilitating an unlimited range of new value-added services and applications, such as account management and billing inquiries. New applications may be introduced quickly and easily without the need for additional infrastructure or modifications to the phone. This will allow operators to differentiate themselves from their competitors with new, customized information services. WAP is an interoperable framework, enabling the provision of end-to-end turnkey solutions that will create a lasting competitive advantage, build consumer loyalty, and increase revenues.

Applications are written in Wireless Markup Language (WML), which is a subset of Extensible Markup Language (XML). Using the same model as the Internet, WAP will enable content and application developers to grasp the tag-based WML that will pave the way for services to be written and deployed within an operator's network quickly and easily. As WAP is a global and interoperable open standard, content providers have immediate access to a wealth of potential customers. These customers seek such applications to enhance the service offerings given to their own existing and potential subscriber base. Mobile consumers are starving for increased functionality and value-added functions from their mobile devices. WAP opens the door to this untapped market that is expected to reach 100 million WAP–enabled devices by the end of the year 2000. This will present developers with significant revenue opportunities.

In the past, wireless Internet access has been limited by the capabilities of handheld devices and wireless networks. WAP utilizes Internet standards, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and Internet Protocol (IP). Many of the protocols are based on Internet standards such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and TLS, but have been optimized for the unique constraints of the wireless environment: low bandwidth, high latency, and less connection stability. Internet standards such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), HTTP, TLS and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) are inefficient over mobile networks, requiring large amounts of mainly text-based data to be sent. Standard HTML content cannot be effectively displayed on the small-size screens of pocket-sized mobile phones and pagers. WAP utilizes binary transmission for greater compression of data and is optimized for long latency and low bandwidth. WAP sessions cope with intermittent coverage and are capable of operating over a wide variety of wireless transports. WML and Wireless Markup Language Script (WMLScript) are used to produce WAP content. They optimize the use of small displays, and navigation may be performed with one hand. WAP content is scalable from a two-line text display on a basic device to a full graphic screen on the latest smart phones and communicators. The lightweight WAP protocol stack is designed to minimize the required bandwidth and maximize the number of wireless network types that can deliver WAP content. Multiple networks will be targeted, with the additional aim of targeting multiple networks. These include Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) 900, 1,800, and 1,900 MHz; Interim Standard (IS)–136; Digital European Cordless Communication (DECT); Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA), Personal Communications Service (PCS), FLEX, and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). All network technologies and bearers will also be supported, including Short Message Service (SMS), USSD, Circuit-Switched Cellular Data (CSD), Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). As WAP is based on a scalable-layered architecture, each layer can develop independently of the others. This makes it possible to introduce new bearers or to use new transport protocols without major changes in the other layers.

The WAP protocols are designed to operate over a variety of different bearers services, including short message, circuit-switched data, and packet data. The bearers offer differing levels of quality of service with respect to throughput, error rate, and delays. The WAP protocols are designed to compensate for or tolerate these varying levels of service. WAP will provide multiple applications for business and customer markets such as banking, corporate database access, and a messaging interface. The request from the mobile device is sent as a URL through the operator's network to the WAP gateway. This gateway is the interface between the operator's network and the Internet.

Architecture of the WAP Gateway:

WDP

The WAP Datagram Protocol (WDP) operates above the data capable bearer services supported by the various network types. As a general transport service, WDP offers a consistent service to the upper layer protocols of WAP and communicates transparently over one of the available bearer services. Since the WDP protocols provide a common interface to the upper layer protocols the Security, Session, and Application layers are able to function independently of the underlying wireless network. This is accomplished by adapting the transport layer to specific features of the underlying bearer. By keeping the transport layer interface and the basic features consistent, global interoperability can be achieved using mediating gateways. In general though, the WDP layer is the transport layer that sends and receives messages via any available bearer network, including SMS, USSD, CSD, CDPD, IS–136 packet data, and GPRS.

WTLS

Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS), an optional security layer, has encryption facilities that provide the secure transport service required by many applications, such as e-commerce. WTLS is based upon the industry-standard Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, formerly known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). WTLS is intended for use with the WAP transport protocols and has been optimised for use over narrow-band communication channels.