I am sure all the readers must be aware of what is Ecommerce if not have already bought things online. New technologies are creeping which are not only making the Internet faster, but also taking the Internet to newer devices such as Cellular phones and other hand held devices.

The advantages of integrating into a wireless world with the Internet are many and the examples are purely magical. Imagine able to start your own TV with your Cellphone or being able to start the room heater / cooler with the aid of your Cellphone as you approach your house / office. As if this is not enough you will also be able to receive broadcasts on your Cellphone. So while approaching the airport / railway station the cell will keep you posted about the flight / train arrivals. All this is possible with WAP, WML and Bluetooth.

In the discussion currently we are saying Cellphone, but the same is applicable to all PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants.) So a mobile phone is no longer merely a telephone but a communication device capable of running applications and communicating with other devices and applications over a wireless network.

For any browser to communicate with Internet the protocol we use is HTTP and the language we use is HTML. In case of Cellphone to communicate with internet the protocol we use is WAP and the language we use is WML (Wireless Markup Language).

Basic reason for the need of these new protocols and language is the change in the mode of communication. For telephone lines and the computer combination the bandwidth and processing power plus the storing capacity at the client side is much better. For wireless network and PDAs these resources are limited.

WAP is the development of established internet protocols and concepts intended to standardize the way in which pagers, mobile phones, and PDAs access information and services. The WAP specification is being developed by a democratic consortium called the WAP forum, which is backed by around 90% of the mobile telephone industry.

A simple WAP application consists of files located on a web server written in Wireless Markup Language (WML) and possibly script files written in WMLScript and graphic files in WMLBitmap format.

The WAP specification for the client-side provide a layered communication protocol, which is embedded into each WAP-Enabled phone, while server-side uses a gateway through which the application server can communicate with the mobile phone. The gateway is an essential ingredient. It is used to binary encode the WAP content for optimum use of the network.

WAP Protocol works in following manner

The user presses a phone key that has a URL assigned to it. The phone sends a URL request to a WAP gateway using the WAP protocol. The gateway creates a conventional HTTP request for the specified URL and sends it to the Web server. The server processes the HTTP request and gives WAP content. The server will add HTTP header to it. The Web server returns the WML content with the added HTTP header. The WAP gateway verifies the HTTP header, and the WML content, then encodes them into binary form. The gateway then creates a WAP response containing WML and sends it to the phone. The phone receives the WAP response and processes the WML to display the appropriate content.

This above diagram also shows that all other server side technologies can be very well connected with WAP.

A simple comparison between WEB and WAP

The next article will explain the use of Bluetooth, and see the wonders the Internet and the PDA can do together.