science

Wireless Application Protocol

Wireless Application Protocol is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wireless Application Protocol rather than just read about it. In short: Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an obsolete technical standard for accessing information over a mobile cellular network. Introduced in 1999, WAP allowed users with compatible mobile devices to browse content such as news, weather and sports scores provided by mobile network operators, specially designed for the limited capabilities of a mobile device.

Key takeaways

Wireless Application Protocol belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wireless Application Protocol to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wireless Application Protocol from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an obsolete technical standard for accessing information over a mobile cellular network. Introduced in 1999, WAP allowed users with compatible mobile devices to browse content such as news, weather and sports scores provided by mobile network operators, specially designed for the limited capabilities of a mobile device. The Japanese i-mode system offered a competing wireless data standard. Before the introduction of WAP, mobile service providers had limited opportunities to offer interactive data services, but needed interactivity to support Internet and Web applications. Although hyped at launch, WAP suffered from criticism. However the introduction of GPRS networks, offering a faster speed, led to an improvement in the WAP experience. WAP content was accessed using a WAP browser, which is like a standard web browser but designed for reading pages specific for WAP, instead of HTML. By the 2010s it had been largely superseded by more modern standards such as XHTML. Modern phones have proper Web browsers, so they do not need WAP markup for compatibility, and therefore, most are no longer able to render and display pages written in WML, WAP's markup language.

Technical specifications

WAP stack The WAP standard described a protocol suite or stack allowing the interoperability of WAP equipment and software with different network technologies, such as GSM and IS-95 (also known as CDMA).

The bottom-most protocol in the suite, the Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP), functions as an adaptation layer that makes every data network look a bit like UDP to the upper layers by providing unreliable transport of data with two 16-bit port numbers (origin and destination). All the upper layers view WDP as one and the same protocol, which has several "technical realizations" on top of other "data bearers" such as SMS, USSD, etc. On native IP bearers such as GPRS, UMTS packet-radio service, or PPP on top of a circuit-switched data connection, WDP is in fact exactly UDP. Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS), an optional layer, provides a public-key cryptography-based security mechanism similar to the Internet's Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. Whether or not WTLS is implemented depends on the required level of security for a given WAP application, and this layer provides data integrity, privacy, authentication, and denial-of-service protection features. WTP provides transaction support adapted to the wireless world. It provides for transmitting messages reliably, similarly to TCP. However WTP is more effective than TCP when packets are lost, a common occurrence with 2G wireless technologies in most radio conditions. WTP does not misinterpret the packet loss as network congestion, unlike TCP. WAP sites are written in WML, a markup language. WAP provides content in the form of decks, which have several cards: decks are similar to HTML web pages as they are the unit of data transmission used by WAP and each have their own unique URL, and cards are elements such as text or buttons which can be seen by a user. WAP has URLs which can be typed into an address bar which is similar to URLs in HTTP. Relative URLs in WAP are used for navigating within a deck, and Absolute URLs in WAP are used for navigating between decks. WAP was designed to operate in bandwidth-constrained networks by using data compression before transmitting data to users. This protocol suite allows a terminal to transmit requests that have an HTTP or HTTPS equivalent to a WAP gateway; the gateway translates requests into plain HTTP. WAP decks are delivered through a proxy which checks decks for WML syntax correctness and consistency, which improves the user experience in resource-constrained mobile phones. WAP cannot guarantee how content will appear on a screen, because WAP elements are treated as hints to accommodate the capabilities of each mobile device. For example some mobile phones do not support graphics/images or italics. The Wireless Application Environment (WAE) space defines application-specific markup languages. For WAP version 1.X, the primary language of the WAE is Wireless Markup Language (WML). In WAP 2.0, the primary markup language is XHTML Mobile Profile.

WAP Push

WAP Push was incorporated into the specification to allow the WAP content to be pushed to the mobile handset with minimal user intervention. A WAP Push is basically a specially encoded message which includes a link to a WAP address. WAP Push was specified on top of Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP); as such, it can be delivered over any WDP-supported bearer, such as GPRS or SMS. Most GSM networks have a wide range of modified processors, but GPRS activation from the network is not generally supported, so WAP Push messages have to be delivered on top of the SMS bearer. On receiving a WAP Push, a WAP 1.2 (or later) -enabled handset will automatically give the user the option to access the WAP content. This is also known as WAP Push SI (Service Indication). A variant, known as WAP Push SL (Service Loading), directly opens the browser to display the WAP content, without user interaction. Since this behaviour raises security concerns, some handsets handle WAP Push SL messages in the same way as SI, by providing user interaction. The network entity that processes WAP Pushes and delivers them over an IP or SMS Bearer is known as a Push Proxy Gateway (PPG).

WAP 2.0 A re-engineered 2.0 version was released in 2002. It uses a cut-down version of XHTML with end-to-end HTTP, dropping the gateway and custom protocol suite used to communicate with it. A WAP gateway can be used in conjunction with WAP 2.0; however, in this scenario, it is used as a standard proxy server. The WAP gateway's role would then shift from one of translation to adding additional information to each request. This would be configured by the operator and could include telephone numbers, location, billing information, and handset information. Mobile devices process XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP), the markup language defined in WAP 2.0. It is a subset of XHTML and a superset of XHTML Basic. A version of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) called WAP CSS is supported by XHTML MP.

MMS

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a combination of WAP and SMS allowing for sending of picture messages.

History

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Wireless Application Protocol: Travel news content shown on the WAP browser on a Nokia 3650 — Travel news content shown on the WAP browser on a Nokia 3650

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wireless Application Protocol

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wireless Application Protocol claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wireless Application Protocol before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wireless Application Protocol ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wireless Application Protocol

In research: Wireless Application Protocol appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wireless Application Protocol in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wireless Application Protocol is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Internet protocols, Mobile telecommunications standards, Open Mobile Alliance standards, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wireless Application Protocol outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wireless Application Protocol in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wireless Application Protocol means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wireless Application Protocol out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wireless Application Protocol in simple terms?

Why does Wireless Application Protocol matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wireless Application Protocol?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wireless Application Protocol.