One fine day, Mr dotcom millionaire is roaming around in his Mercedes. Suddenly, he remembers he has to buy a fast laser printer for his new office and luckily, there’s a computer peripherals shop nearby. But before buying one, he wants to go through the printer reviews on PC Quest Website. However, he doesn’t have a PC or a notebook, a modem or a phone line in his car. What he always carries along is his small metal brown-colored cellphone. Does he give up saying "I can’t get connected"? For the dotcom millionaire’s of this world, who want to connect to the Net from anywhere and everywhere, welcome to the unconnected world—welcome to the world of WAP.

Before you misinterpret what we’ve said above, by unconnected world we don’t mean a world that isn’t connected. We mean that there are no wires or cables, but you’re still connected. Interesting? Read on for more on how this is happening around the world, with the help of this exciting technology—in fact, a protocol (set of rules)—to access computer networks, especially the Internet, through your mobile or cellphone. It’s called WAP, short for Wireless Application Protocol.

WAP is meant to provide services to all small devices—cellphones, pagers, PDAs, etc—that you can carry along comfortably. It’s meant primarily to access the information highway—that is, the Internet—through devices with low and inadequate resources like slow CPUs, less RAM, small displays, and low bandwidth and connection stability. The protocol builds upon existing wireless networks, like mobile or cellphone networks, and also provides some enhancements, like better user interface, to their standard services.

Let’s contrast HTTP with WAP to understand how you can browse a WAP-enabled Website.

WAP defines a protocol stack which has a layered design similar to OSI network layers. It defines a Wireless Application Layer (WAL), Wireless Session Layer (WSL), Wireless Transaction Layer (WTL), Wireless Transport Security Layer (WTSL) and Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP).

WML (Wireless Markup Language) is to WAP what HTML is to the Web. If you’re familiar with HTML, you’ll find the WML syntax very similar. WML pages are designed such that they can be viewed comfortably on small displays. So, a wireless device seeks for a WML page from a Web server, to be displayed on an embedded microbrowser, very much like your browser seeking for an HTML page. The difference is that the wireless device uses an additional intermediary called the WAP proxy.

A WAP transaction with a Web server

The figure depicts a simple transaction that requests a WML page through a mobile phone.

The mobile phone user; keys in a URL in the microbrowser in his cellphone, say www.foo.com/foo.wml or www.foo.com/foo.html and connects to his mobile service provider. The request is encoded for transmission across the wireless network and is sent to a WAP proxy, which is most likely installed at the service provider’s site. The WAP proxy constructs a standard HTTP request and contacts the Web server addressed. The Web server sends the requested WML or HTML page to the WAP proxy. If the page is a WML page, the WAP proxy encodes it for the cellphone network you’re using, and simply forwards it to the microbrowser running on the WAP phone. If it’s a non-WAP page, say an HTML page, the WAP proxy applies a filter to translate it to a WAP page, encodes it, and delivers it to the microbrowser.

Non-Internet services

As explained above, a WAP proxy acts as an intermediary between your WAP phone and a remote Web server on the Internet. But that isn’t the only thing that you can access using WAP. Your mobile service provider could use WAP to make available additional services—including virtual private networks to your office network, from your cellphone. This is done using WTA (Wireless Telephony Application) servers. Here, the wireless device (your cellphone) connects directly to the WTA server, which is usually installed at the mobile service provider’s site. The WTA server may provide some standard as well as service provider specific services. For example, a WAP-phone user could maintain an address book on the WTA server. The WTA server can also be used to maintain a private database accessible to all cellphone users from a subscriber company, etc. Enhanced security would be an obvious feature in a WTA server.

WAP for users

As a user, you get a whole range of customized, up-to-date services when on the move. For instance, you could check your cash position at your bank before committing to deals. Or, you could track your stock portfolio when on the move. You could even buy or bid for products on a WAP-enabled Website. WAP implements a security layer called Wireless Transport Layer Security, which is based on SSL (Secure Socket Layer), for enabling secure transactions. Not only that, you could also view your e-mail inbox, while on the move, or use WAP-enabled search engines to search for anything and everything. Moreover with WAP’s push technology, you can be notified of events like changes in airline schedules, by your service provider or a Website.