Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

What's WAP?

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a way of sending information to and from mobile devices, particularly mobile phones. It provides a way to minimise the amount of data to send, and has some interactive scripting facilities.

WAP is not browsing web pages from a mobile phone. You can do this with some phones, but not by WAP. See the Fax and Data page for more information.

Setting it up

There are three components in a typical WAP setup: the WAP server providing the information, the WAP gateway and the WAP browser. To get it all to work, you need to arrange each part to connect to its neighbours in this chain.

WAP Server

A WAP server is simply an http: (web) server set up to understand the content-types used by WAP: mainly .wml .wmlc, .wmls, .wmlsc and .wbmp. Like web page servers, it may use a database to provide up-to-date data, but this depends on how it is configured.

WAP Gateway

A WAP gateway translates the http: used across the internet to the wap: used for the link to mobile devices. It is possible to combine a WAP gateway in the WAP server, but it could just as easily be thousands of miles away.

The Browser

Some new models of mobile phones have built-in WAP browsers. You can also get WAP phone emulators which work on PCs, but this is more of interest to developers than mobile users. They normally connect to the internet by using a normal data connection, calling an ISP's access number. Some phone networks and ISPs limit which WAP gateways you can use from their connections, but this should rapidly change, giving access to any information you can find.

Two ways to connect

A wap connection has to use some sort of data connection. Generally, you have a choice between dialling a data connection (charged by the minute, but sometimes with a rather high minimum call charge) or using a GPRS connection (charged according to the amount of data transferred, with no per-minute costs)

Settings to Use

The settings to use vary according to whether you prefer dial-up connection or GPRS, which network you are on, and sometimes whether it is a contract or PAYG account. See the WAP Settings page for details. GPRS is charged according to the volume of data transferred, and dial-up is chaged by the time you are connected. What ends up cheapest depends on your pattern of use, but in general GPRS is faster.

Some ISPs offer real local numbers you can use, which allow you to use "inclusive minutes". ClaraNet http://www.clara.net, for example, have real Points Of Presence (POPs) in many parts of the UK, and offer a free "Unlimited Trial" account.

See the Fax and Data page for more information about data connections, and Net4nowt for a fuller list of free ISPs with geographic access numbers.

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