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WAP - technical definition

A carrier-independent, device-independent, transaction-oriented protocol employed in Web-enabled cellular networks in support of text, graphics, and audio.The best performance is achieved when accessing Web sites written in WML (Wireless Markup Language), which is similar to HTML. The alternative is transcoding from HTML to WML, which is accomplished through gateways.A much simpler, but much less attractive technique is Web clipping, which strips the graphic content out of Web pages. Security over the wireless link is provided through Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS).WAP is employed outside of Japan, where the i-Mode microbrowser technology is employed. See also browser, carrier, cellular, i-Mode, protocol, Web, and WML.

See WAP in Computer

(1) (Wireless Access Point) See access point.

(2) (Wired Access Point) See wired access point.

(3) (Wireless Application Protocol) A standard for providing cellphones, pagers and other handhelds with secure access to e-mail and text-based Web pages. Introduced in 1997 by Phone.com, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia, WAP provides an environment for wireless applications that includes a wireless version of TCP/IP and a framework for telephony integration such as call control and phone book access. Supporting keypad and voice recognition, WAP is independent of the air interface and runs over all major wireless networks. It is also device independent and can be used in any mobile device.

WML, WMLScript and XHTML
WAP introduced the Wireless Markup Language (WML), a streamlined version of HTML, and WMLScript, a compact form of JavaScript that runs in limited memory. WML later evolved into mobile versions of XHTML, which, along with all WAP protocols, are governed by the Open Mobile Alliance, the successor to the WAP Forum (see OMA).

WAP and SMS = MMS
The multimedia messaging system (MMS) uses both the SMS text messaging and WAP protocols to transmit graphics, audio and video to cellphones (see MMS). See WTLS, XHTML, HDML, Openwave and i-mode.

No Information Overload Here

These are examples of the earlier, and very small, cellphone screens that were available when WAP was first deployed. (Image courtesy of Openwave Systems Inc.)

A WAP Gateway

This diagram depicts Openwave's Mobile Access Gateway which encodes and decodes WAP pages between the microbrowser in the smartphone and the Web server.

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