TCOM Overview Individual Presentation

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TCOM OverviewIndividual Presentation
WAP

• Manohar U. Nikkam

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Agenda

• Overview
• Architecture

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An Introduction to WAP

• What is WAP?
• Why WAP?
• WAP forum objectives principles
• The WAP solution to wireless internet
• Facts about WAP

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What is WAP?

• The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a
  result of continuous work to define an industry
  wide specification for developing applications
  that operate over wireless communication
  networks.
• WAP 1.0 Specifications
• April 30th Published at www.wapforum.org
• WAP is positioned at the convergence of three
  rapidly evolving network technologies,
• wireless data,
• telephony, and
• the Internet

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Why WAP?

• The Wireless Industry has chosen the WAP
  Standard because it is
• An open industry-established world standard
• Committed to by handset manufacturers
  representing over 90 of the world market across
  all technologies
• Supported by network operators representing 100
  Million subscribers

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Why WAP ?

• Based on Internet standards including XML and IP
• The WML UI components map well onto existing
  mobile phone user interfaces
• no re-education of the end-users
• leveraging market penetration of mobile devices
• WAP utilizes plain Web HTTP 1.1 servers
• leveraging existing development methodologies
• CGI, ASP, NSAPI, JAVA, Servlets, etc.

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Why Is HTTP/HTML Not Enough?
Big pipe - small pipe syndrome
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Why Not HTTP?

• Encoding not compact enough
• No push facility
• Inefficient capability negotiation

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WAP Wireless Operators
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WAP Device Manufacturers
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WAP Software Companies
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WAP Infrastructure Companies
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Objectives of the WAP Forum

• Bring internet content and advanced services to
  wireless handsets and other wireless terminals
• Create a global wireless protocol specification
  to work across differing wireless network
  technologies
• Submit specifications for adoption by appropriate
  industry and standards bodies
• Enable applications to scale across a variety of
  transport options and device types

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WAP Membership -- Feb. 99

• 90 companies committed to Wireless Internet
  Standards

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WAP Principles

• A complete Wireless Internet Solution must
• Use existing standards
• Promote new open standards
• Provide Air Interface Independence
• Provide Device Independence

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Open Standards

• Assure interoperability
• Encourage innovation
• Foster competition

• HTTP

• TCP/IP

• XML

• SSL

Benefit the carrier by creating multiple
suppliers of interoperable components and
valuable applications
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Bearer Independence

• Allows Applications developed once to work across
  all networks -- today and tomorrow
• Protects the Carriers investment in wireless
  data as networks evolve
• Enables Handset Manufacturers to use common code
  across product lines

• SMS

• CSD

• TDMA

• GSM

• USSD

• GPRS

• CDPD

• CDMA

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Device Independence

• Allows Applications developed once to work across
  many devices from small handsets to powerful
  PDAs
• Promotes consistent user experience across all of
  a carriers handset offerings
• Encourages wealth of applications for handset
  manufacturers that implement the standard

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Wireless Internet Requires Solutions tailored to
Wireless

• As compared to the traditional Internet
• The Market is Different
• The Network is Different
• The Device is Different

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Challenge The Market is Different

• Applications must be as easy as a phone to use --
  therefore much easier to use than a PC.
• Solution must provide significant value at low
  incremental cost.
• Needs at the handset are not the same as at the
  desktop.

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WAP Solution Enable the Market

• WAP applications are developed for the handset to
  produce the best user experience.
• The WAP microbrowser has low impact on handset
  costs.
• WAP protocols and development environment enable
  focused content for the subscriber

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Challenge The Network is Different

• Power and spectrum limitations mean low bandwidth
  relative to wire line.
• Higher bandwidth comes at economic expense
• Trend towards packet means shared channels
• Latency is an issue
• Transactions very small, so users perceive
  latency
• Reliability varies widely, and fails differently
  from the Internet.
• I.e, Out-of-coverage is a common occurrence.

Implication There is value in protocol
optimization.
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WAP Solution Wireless-optimized Protocols

• WAP runs only on the wireless portion
• WAP Protocol stack is optimized for wireless
• WAP runs on all networks, including IP networks
• WAP even works over SMS

• WAP is working with W3C to merge into HTTP-NG
  (Next Generation) work

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Challenge The Device is Different

• Form-factor limited to comfort in the human hand
• Device has extremely limited CPU power, memory
  (RAM ROM) space, and display size
• Consumers demand long battery life, and therefore
  low power consumption
• Increasing bandwidth requires more power

• Implications
• Screen size and input mechanisms will always be
  limited.
• Consumer desire for longer battery life will
  always limit
• available bandwidth, CPU, memory and display.
• Consumer-class applications must be handset-aware.

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WAP Solution Microbrowser optimized for the
consumer handset

• Requires minimal RAM, ROM, Display, CPU and keys
• Provides carrier with consistent service UI
  across devices
• Provides Internet compatibility
• Enables wide array of available content and
  applications

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FACTS about WAP

• WML is XML
• WAP is working with W3C on HTTP-NG
• much interest in WAPs work with WSP
• joint WAP/W3C white paper coming soon
• WAP supports IP on suitable bearers
• uses UDP/IP where possible
• targeting wireless TCP for connection protocol
• WAP is working with IETF on wireless TCP
• Uses a socket interface to higher layers
• WAP can also use bearers where IP cannot work
• e.g. SMS, USSD

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WAP Architecture
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The World-Wide Web Model

• The web browser sends requests for named data
  objects to a network server and the network
  server responds with the data encoded using the
  standard formats.

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WAP Model
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WAP Model (contd.)

• Adopted WWW programming model.
• Optimizations and extensions have been made in
  order to match the characteristics of the
  wireless environment.
• Most significant enhancements to programming
  model are
• Push
• Wireless Telephony Applications

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Feature/Performance-enhancing Proxies
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Functions of WAP Proxy

• WAP Proxy provides
• Protocol Gateway translates requests from a
  wireless protocol stack
• Content Encoders and Decoders translate WAP
  content into a compact format that allows for
  better utilization of the underlying link due to
  its reduced size.
• User Agent Profile (UAProf) client capabilities
  and personal preferences UAProf are composed
  and presented to the applications.
• Caching Proxy improve perceived performance and
  network utilization by maintaining a cache of
  frequently accessed resources.

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Supporting Servers
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Supporting Servers (contd)

• Provide Services to
• Devices
• Proxies
• Applications
• Supporting servers include
• PKI Portal Allows devices to create new public
  key certificates.
• UAProf Server Allows applications to retrieve
  client capabilities and personal profiles of user
  agents and individual users.
• Provisioning Server Trusted by WAP device to
  provide provisioning information

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WAP Network Elements
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Device Architecture
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Device Architecture (Contd.)

• Application framework provides device execution
  environment for WAP applications. WAP
  applications consists of markup, scripts, style
  sheets, and multimedia content, all of which are
  rendered on the device.
• Network protocols - on device are shared between
  client and server.
• Content Renderers - interpret specific forms of
  content and present them to the end user for
  perusal or interaction
• WIM consists of identity of the device and
  cryptographic means to authenticate WAP devices
  and servers.
• External functionality interface provides a
  mechanism to access external functions that are
  embedded or attached to the devices.

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Components of WAP Architecture
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Bearer Networks

• Protocols have been selected or designed to
  operate over wide variety of different bearer
  services, short message, circuit switched, and
  packet data.
• Transport services layer provides the interface
  between the bearer service and rest of WAP stack.
• The transport specifications may list the bearers
  that are supported and the techniques used to
  allow protocols run over each bearer.

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Transport Services

• Datagrams Data transport in which
  self-contained, independent entities of data
  carry sufficient information to be routed from
  source to destination and transporting network.
  Protocols that provide this service are
• User Datagram protocol (UDP)
• Wireless Datagram protocol (WDP)

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Transport Services (Contd.)

• Connections service in which communication
  proceeds in three well defined phases
• Connection establishment
• Two way reliable data transfer
• Connection release
• Protocols that provide this service are
• Transmission control protocol (TCP)
• Wireless profiled TCP (WP-TCP)

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Transfer Service

• Hypermedia transfer provide transfer of
  self-describing hyper media resources. Protocols
  that provide this service are
• Wireless Session Protocol (WSP) Wireless
  Transfer Protocol (WTP) over secure and
  non-secure datagram transports
• HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) over secure
  and non-secure connection oriented transports
• Streaming means for transferring data
  isochronously such as audio and video
• Message transfer means for transferring
  multimedia messages such as email and instant
  messages. MMSEncapsulation is the protocol used
  to transfer messages between WAP devices and MMS
  servers

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Session Services

• Provide establishment of shared state between
  network elements that span multiple network
  requests or data transfers.
• Session service include
• Capability Negotiation For describing,
  transmitting, and managing capabilities and
  preference information about the client, user and
  network elements.
• Push OTA (Over The Air) Provide network
  initiated transactions to be delivered to
  wireless devices that are intermittently able to
  receive data. It operates over connection-oriented
  transport service and datagram transport.
• Sync Provides synchronization of data.
• Cookies Allows applications to establish state
  on the client or proxy that survives multiple
  hypermedia transfer transactions.

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Application Framework

• Provides general purpose application environment
• Provides interoperable environment

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Application Framework (Contd.)

• Application framework includes
• WAE/WTA user-agent
• WML Microbrowser
• WMLScript Virtual Machine
• WMLScript Standard Library
• Wireless Telephony Application Interface
• WAP Content Types
• Push
• Initiates transmission of data to applications
  resident on WAP devices
• Multimedia messaging
• Processing of multimedia messages
• Ex emails, messages etc
• Content formats
• Support for well-define data formats
• Ex color, images, audio, video, animation, phone
  book records and calendar information

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Security Services

• Services found in many layers
• Security facilities offered are
• Privacy
• Ensures communication is private
• Authentication
• Establish authenticity of parties to the
  communication
• Integrity
• Ensure communication is unchanged and uncorrupted
• Non-repudiation
• Ensure parties in communication can not deny the
  communication took place

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Security Services (contd.)

• Examples of Security Services
• Cryptographic Libraries
• Authentication
• Mechanisms for client and server authentication.
• Identity
• WIM provides functions that store and process
  information needed for user identification and
  authentication.
• PKI
• Enable use and management of public key
  cryptography and certificates.
• Secure transport
• Secure transport over datagrams and connections
• Secure Bearer

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Service Discovery

• External Functionality Interface
• Discovery external services/functions available
  on the device.
• Provisioning
• Device provisioned with parameters necessary to
  access network services.
• Navigation Discovery
• Device discovers new services when during course
  of navigation.
• Service Lookup
• Discover services parameters through directory
  lookup by name. Ex Domain Name System.

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Sample Configurations

• WAP gateway converts hypermedia transfer service
  between datagram based protocols (WSP, WTP, WTLS,
  WDP) and connection-oriented protocols commonly
  used on the internet (HTTP, SSL, TCP).

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WSP Overview

• Provides shared state between client and server
  used to optimize content transfer
• Provides semantics and mechanisms based on HTTP
  1.1
• Enhancements for WAE, wireless networks and
  low-end devices

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WTP Services and Protocols

• WTP (Transaction)
• Provide efficient request/reply based transport
  mechanism suitable for devices with limited
  resources over networks with low to medium
  bandwidth.
• no explicit connection setup or tear down
• data carried in first packet of protocol exchange
• supports
• retransmission of lost packets
• selective-retransmission
• segmentation / re-assembly
• port number addressing (UDP ports numbers)
• flow control
• message oriented (not stream)
• supports an Abort function for outstanding
  requests

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WTP Services and Protocols

• WTP continued
• Uses the service primitives
• T-TRInvoke.req .cnf. .ind .res
• T-TRResult.req .cnf .ind .res
• T-abort.req .ind

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WDP Services and Protocols

• WDP (Datagram)
• provides a connection-less, unreliable datagram
  service
• WDP is replaced by UDP when used over an IP
  network layer
• WDP over IP is UDP/IP

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Protocol Layers for Networks supporting IP
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Protocol Layers for Networks supporting
IP (contd.)

• Wireless Profiled HTTP (WP-HTTP)
• Transport Layer Security (TLS)
• Wireless Profiled TCP (WP-TCP)

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Wireless Profiles HTTP (WP-HTTP)

• HTTP for wireless environment
• Interoperable with HTTP/1.1
• Supports compression of message body
• Supports secure tunnels

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Transport Layer Security

• Wireless profiled TLS protocol
• Permits interoperability for secure transactions
• Includes
• Cipher suites
• Certificate formats
• Signaling algorithms
• Can provide end-to-end security with TLS
  tunneling at Transport level

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Wireless Profiled TCP (WP-TCP)

• Provides connection-oriented services
• Interoperable with TCP implementations in internet

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DUAL WAP Stack

• WAP 2.0 supports both stacks
• Operate Independently
• Devices supporting both switching might occur as
  device moves in and out of coverage of different
  network areas

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Comparison between Internet and WAP Technologies
Internet
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Bearers

• Bearers currently supported by WAP

• GSM SMS, USSD, C-S Data, GPRS
• IS-136 R-Data, C-S Data, Packet
• CDMA SMS, C-S Data
• PDC C-S Data, Packet
• PHS C-S Data
• CDPD
• iDEN SMS, C-S Data, Packet
• FLEX and ReFLEX
• DataTAC

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Industry Analyst Quotes

• I think 2000 will be the year for WAP.
  Initially, services such as banking, stock quotes
  and even trading, traffic information, news, and
  e-mail are expected to be among the standard
  offerings from WAP portal providers.
• Declan Lonergan, Strategy Analytics

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Industry Analyst Projections

• More than 52 million WAP handsets and other
  devices will be available in the United States by
  2004.
• The Yankee Group

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References

• www.wapforum.org
• www.openwave.com

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Thank You !