WAP

1
WAP Wireless Application
Protocol

• RAJEEV GOPALAKRISHNA
• CS590F Fall 2000

2
WAP What it is not

• Latest Cellular phone
• Yet Another Painful Protocol
• Gizmo from the Silicon valley

WAP What it is
WAP is a suite of specifications that defines a
protocol for presentation and delivery of
wireless information and telephony services on
mobile phones and other wireless terminals
3
WAP - Why Another Protocol
Network is different
Device is different

• Less powerful CPUs
• Less memory
• Restricted power consumption
• Smaller displays
• Different input devices (ex phone keypad, voice
  input etc)

• Less bandwidth
• More latency
• Less connection stability
• Less predictable availability

4
WAP Model





Client WAE User Agent
Gateway Encoders And Decoders
Origin Server
CGI Scripts etc
content
5
Example WAP Network

WAP Proxy
WML
Web Server
Wireless Network Binary
WML
HTML
HTML Filter
WML
WTA Server
6
WAP Architecture

7
Wireless Application Environment
Micro browser environment

• Wireless Markup Language (WML)
• - card and deck approach
• WML Script
• Wireless Telephony Application (WTA)
• Content Formats

8
Wireless Session Protocol
Features

• Two Session Services
• Connection Oriented
• Connectionless
• Suited for browsing applications (WSP/B)
• HTTP/1.1 functionality and semantics
• Long-lived session state
• Session suspend and resume with session
  migration

9
Wireless Transaction Protocol
Features

• 3 classes of transaction services
• unreliable one-way requests
• reliable one-way requests
• reliable two-way request-reply
  transactions
• Reliability
• re-transmissions,acks,duplicate removal
• Asynchronous transactions
• no explicit connection setup or teardown
  phases
• Message oriented

10
Wireless Transport Layer Security

Features

• Data Integrity
• Privacy
• Authentication
• DoS protection
• Optional !
• Handshake Protocol (Optimized)

11
Wireless Datagram Protocol
Features

• Common interface to upper layer protocols
• Port numbers
• Supports multiple bearers

12
Competing Technologies

• Wireless Knowledge
• Palm VII
• I-Mode
• SIM-toolkit

Edge over others

• OS independent Palm OS, Windows CE, EPOC
• Bearer/network independent
• Great Backing WAP Forum

13
QUESTIONS