What is a WAP gateway?
A WAP gateway is a piece of software that has several functions in the “chain” between the WAP device and the web server. These functions are in general: • Converting the markup language (WML) from textual format to tokenized (binary/compressed) format which is readable by the WAP device. • Translating the requests from the WAP device to HTTP requests for the “web” world. • Convert between the SSL encryption used in the “web” world and the WTLS encryption used in the WAP world. • Convert between the “transport” protocol of the “web”, TCP, and that of the WAP world, WDP. Optionally many gateways also perform other conversions such as between plain text files, simple HTML files etc into a WAP readable format. If a WAP gateway is hosted by a mobile operator, the mobile operator may use the gateway to add mobile specific information into the HTTP stream such as the subscriber number, location details etc (although this is not widely used). Some WAP gateways are publically available on the
The WAP gateway is the link between the WAP device and the webserver. The WAP device sends a request to the WAP gateway. The gateway creates a HTTP request and contacts the according webserver. The webserver answers in WML. The WAP gateway ‘compiles’ the WML response into a binary format before it is transmitted over-the-air to the WAP device. When the WAP device requests to browse a non-WAP-URL, the WAP gateway will receive a standard HTML response from the webserver. It is now an optional functionality of the WAP gateway, to convert this non-WAP response into a WAP-conform format before it is propagated to the WAP device. If you are the one who is responsible for the webserver’s content, you should not assume that all your mobile visitors will access your server via such an well-configured WAP gateway. Therefore either your webserver has to create the appropriate WML output, or a HAWHAW proxy server has to do this conversion.
A WAP gateway is a piece of software that has several functions in the “chain” between the WAP device and the web server. These functions are in general: • Converting the markup language (WML) from textual format to tokenized (binary/compressed) format which is readable by the WAP device. • Translating the requests from the WAP device to HTTP requests for the “web” world. • Convert between the SSL encryption used in the “web” world and the WTLS encryption used in the WAP world. • Convert between the “transport” protocol of the “web”, TCP, and that of the WAP world, WDP. Optionally many gateways also perform other conversions such as between plain text files, simple HTML files etc into a WAP readable format. If a WAP gateway is hosted by a mobile operator, the mobile operator may use the gateway to add mobile specific information into the HTTP stream such as the subscriber number, location details etc (although this is not widely used). Some WAP gateways are publicly available on the in
