1 Wireless Gateway Programming Model Qadri Hamarsheh Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Philadelphia University Amman, Jordan E-mail: qhamarsheh@philadelphia.edu.jo Abstract This paper suggests architecture for Wireless Gateway Programming Model that consists of building blocks to solve the main WAP Gateway functions. The design of the suggested architecture takes into consideration the technical and business problems of wireless environment. The paper describes various fundamental aspects of the WAP model, the integration of the wireless networks over the internet technologies according to the topics related to the security, caching, state management, etc. Keywords – Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Wireless Gateway, WAP Client, WAP Security, WAP Gateway Programming Model. I. INTRODUCTION This paper is organized as follows: section I presents an overview and general WAP architecture: technical and business problems, WAP evolution and the WAP Programming Model with brief introduction to WAP Gateway technology. In section II, WAP Gateway duties are introduced. The suggested Gateway programming structure is presented in section III. Conclusions of this work are presented in section IV and the list of references is written in section V. Technical and Business Problems Over the time, WAP suffers from many technical and business problems that are unique to the wireless environment over internet and related to different factors: hardware factors, user interface consideration, and optimization of the network resources. 1. Hardware Factors[3,4,6,9] The hardware factors are the following: small screen (mobile size and weight), limited CPU, memory size, batteries and power. 2. Network Optimization Factors[1,2,26] The network factors are the following: less bandwidth of wireless networks, TCP\IP protocol not suitable to the wireless telecommunications environment, error Prone, many overheads, requiring messages between client and server, less connection stability, less predictable availability, and interoperability, usability and incompatibility of many mobile devices according to operating systems and available formats for different types of information. 3. User Interface and Business Considerations The business factors are the following: simple user interface and building a system for mobile services needs to be profitable. WAP Evolution [19, 20] WAP is an open de-facto world standard (created by phone.com, Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola ) for presentation and access of applications, information and telephony services on mobile phones and other terminals that operate over wireless communication networks. Table 1 provides the main WAP evolution stages. Year Company Protocol Software/ Language cHTML Lang. 1992 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Japan i-mode Gateway HDML Lang. Gateway 1994 Unwired Planet Now Phone.com USA [27, 30] HDTP Browser 1995 Ericsson [31] ITTP -------- TTML Lang. NBS Lang. 1997 Nokia [28] -------- Gateway WML 1.0 WMLScript 1997 Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Phone.com (WAP Forum) [29] WAP 1.0 (1998) Standard Other Software and Languages Table 1: WAP Evolution The WAP Model One of the prevailing tendencies of the modern stage of wireless communication' development is the wireless networks integration over internet technologies. WAP specifications (which are defined by the following components: Application layer, Session layer, Transaction layer, Security layer, and Transport layer) allow the use of integrated WAP application architecture that includes, in general, content provider (application or origin server), mobile device (WAP client), WAP Gateway and WAP proxy. The WAP architecture can easily support other configurations for accessing information through internet. The WAP Programming Model is presented in Figure 1.