WAP for Dummies

First things first:: With WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) you do not surf in the "normal" Internet but browse in a parallel world created for the use of WAP-enabled devices with small displays and slow data transfer rates.

WAP passes on a request from a WAP-enabled device (mobile phones, pager, notebooks, PDA) to a (WAP-) server. A request like "Give me WAP page xyz" or "Transfer this picture to my mobile phone" is transmitted to the server that will execute this order and transfer the requested information. Should the server not be able to answer (perhaps because the requested picture is not available), the WAP-enabled device get an error message like "page cannot be loaded". This message also appears when WAP-enabled devices like the Nokia 7110 have problems with transferring WAP sites with a huge amount of data.

The maximum speed for wireless data transfer at the moment is 9,600 informations per second. Compared with the internet speed of 64,000 informations per seconds, this is very slow indeed. But remedial action is taken: Probably by the end of the year 2002, a new protocol named GPRS, UMTS will connect you faster (up to 100,000 informations per second) with WAP sites.

WAP is especially made for slow data transfer rates. This requires WML, a language for programmingWAP pages.WML is much alike HTML, the internet programming code, but its functionality is adapted to mobile devices. WML pages are translated into a byte code which is transferred to the WAP-enabled device. That means that with WAP it is not possible to transfer any Internet page to a mobile phone but the pages developed in WML.

To get access to a WAP service you have to install a WAP gateway of a wireless service provider (in Germany: D1, Vodafone, E-Plus, O2) on your WAP-enabled device. This WAP gateway transmits WAP requests to the Internet and mediates the answer. For this service the customer pays 19 Cent per minute (as at May 2002). Compared with 0.9 Cent per minute for a connection to the Iinternet, this is of course the main argument against WAP services.

WAP sites of companies or private individuals can be hosted on web servers at a Internet-Web-Provider (like WubscH). Security-critical applications can be made available on WAP servers at a special WAP-Provider or web servers where a WAP-gateway will translate all incoming requests.

We hope this helped a bit to inform you about the basics of the wireless internet ;-) Have a lot of fun with WAP.