Chapter 4

MOBILE Computing, WAP & WML

TCP/IP Suite
 Internet Protocol Suite
 Application Layer: FTP, Telnet & Rlogin, HTTP, RTP
 Transport Layer: TCP, UDP, Port Numbers, Sockets
 Network Layer: IP, ICMP, Routing
 Link Layer: Ethernet, PPP, ARP, MAC Addressing
Table 1: - TCP/IP Layer Overview
TCP/IP Layers Tasks Protocol Examples
Application Application specific Telnet, rlogin, FTP, SMTP,
SNMP, HTTP, ...
Transport End-to-end flow of data TCP, UDP
between application
processes
Network Routing of packets IP, ICMP
between hosts
Link Hardware interface PPP, Ethernet, IEEE 802.x,
Packet transfer be- ARP
tween network nodes

Mobile computing

Mobile computing is human–computer interaction by which a computer is expected to be

transported during normal usage, which allows for transmission of data, voice and video. Mobile
computing involves mobile communication, mobile hardware, and mobile software.
Communication issues include ad hoc networks and infrastructure networks as well as
communication properties, protocols, data formats and concrete technologies. Hardware includes
mobile devices or device components. Mobile software deals with the characteristics and
requirements of mobile applications.

Principles of Mobile Computing

 Portability: Devices/nodes connected within the mobile computing system should facilitate
mobility. These devices may have limited device capabilities and limited power supply, but

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 should have a sufficient processing capability and physical portability to operate in a
movable environment.
 Connectivity: This defines the quality of service (QoS) of the network connectivity. In a
mobile computing system, the network availability is expected to be maintained at a high
level with the minimal amount of lag/downtime without being affected by the mobility of the
connected nodes.
 Interactivity: The nodes belonging to a mobile computing system are connected with one
another to communicate and collaborate through active transactions of data.
 Individuality: A portable device or a mobile node connected to a mobile network often
denotes an individual; a mobile computing system should be able to adopt the technology to
cater the individual needs and also to obtain contextual information of each node.

Limitations

 Range and Bandwidth: Mobile Internet access is generally slower than direct cable
connections. These networks are usually available within range of commercial cell phone
towers.
 Security standards: Security is a major concern while concerning the mobile computing
standards on the fleet. One can easily attack the VPN through a huge number of networks
interconnected through the line.
 Power consumption: When a power outlet or portable generator is not available, mobile
computers must rely entirely on battery power. Combined with the compact size of many
mobile devices, this often means unusually expensive batteries must be used to obtain the
necessary battery life.
 Transmission interferences: Weather, terrain, and the range from the nearest signal point
can all interfere with signal reception. Reception in tunnels, some buildings, and rural areas
is often poor.
 Potential health hazards: People who use mobile devices while driving are often distracted
from driving and are thus assumed more likely to be involved in traffic accidents. Cell
phones may interfere with sensitive medical devices.

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 Human Interface with Device: Screens and keyboards tend to be small, which may make
them hard to use. Alternate input methods such as speech or handwriting recognition require
training.

Introduction to Mobile IP
Mobile IP is an open standard that allows users to keep the same IP address, stay connected, and
maintain ongoing applications while roaming between IP networks. Mobile IP is scalable for the
Internet because it is based on IP—any media that can support IP can support Mobile IP. The
number of wireless devices for voice or data is projected to surpass the number of fixed devices.

Mobile data communication will likely emerge as the technology supporting most
communication including voice and video. Mobile data communication will be pervasive in
cellular systems such as 3G and in wireless LAN such as 802.11, and will extend into satellite
communication. Though mobility may be enabled by link-layer technologies, data crossing
networks or different link layers is still a problem. The solution to this problem is a standards-
based protocol, Mobile IP.

Mobile IP Overview

In IP networks, routing is based on stationary IP addresses, similar to how a postal letter is

delivered to the fixed address on the envelope. A device on a network is reachable through
normal IP routing by the IP address it is assigned on the network.

The problem occurs when a device roams away from its home network and is no longer
reachable using normal IP routing. This results in the active sessions of the device being
terminated. Mobile IP was created to enable users to keep the same IP address while traveling to
a different network (which may even be on a different wireless operator), thus ensuring that a
roaming individual could continue communication without sessions or connections being
dropped.

Because the mobility functions of Mobile IP are performed at the network layer rather than the
physical layer, the mobile device can span different types of wireless and wireline networks
while maintaining connections and ongoing applications. Remote login, remote printing, and file
transfers are some examples of applications where it is undesirable to interrupt communications
while an individual roams across network boundaries. Also, certain network services, such as

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software licenses and access privileges, are based on IP addresses. Changing these IP addresses
could compromise the network services.

Components of a Mobile IP Network

Mobile IP has the following three components, as shown in Figure 1:

• Mobile Node
• Home Agent
• Foreign Agent

The Mobile Node is a device such as a cell phone, personal digital assistant, or laptop whose
software enables network roaming capabilities.

The Home Agent is a router on the home network serving as the anchor point for communication
with the Mobile Node; it tunnels packets from a device on the Internet, called a Correspondent
Node, to the roaming Mobile Node. (A tunnel is established between the Home Agent and a
reachable point for the Mobile Node in the foreign network.)

The Foreign Agent is a router that may function as the point of attachment for the Mobile Node
when it roams to a foreign network, delivering packets from the Home Agent to the Mobile
Node. The care-of address is the termination point of the tunnel toward the Mobile Node when it
is on a foreign network. The Home Agent maintains an association between the home IP address

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of the Mobile Node and its care-of address, which is the current location of the Mobile Node on
the foreign or visited network

How Mobile IP Works

The Mobile IP process has three main phases, which are

• Agent Discovery: - A Mobile Node discovers its Foreign and Home Agents during agent
discovery.
• Registration: - The Mobile Node registers its current location with the Foreign Agent and
Home Agent during registration.
• Tunneling: - A reciprocal tunnel is set up by the Home Agent to the care-of address (current
location of the Mobile Node on the foreign network) to route packets to the Mobile Node as it
roams.

Introduction to WAP
WAP is the de facto worldwide standard for providing Internet communications and
advanced telephony services on digital mobile phones, pagers, personal digital assistants,
and other wireless terminals. WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol.
It’s the set of rules governing the transmission and reception of data by computer
applications on or via wireless devices like mobile phones. WAP allows wireless devices to
view specifically designed pages from the Internet using only plain text and very simple
black-and-white pictures.
WAP is a standardized technology for cross-platform, distributed computing very similar
to the Internet's combination of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP), except that it is optimized for:
 Low-display capability
 Low-memory
 Low-bandwidth devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), wireless phones, and
pagers
WAP is designed to scale across a broad range of wireless networks like GSM, IS-95, IS-136,
and PDC.

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4.7.1. WAP Model
The Internet Model
The Internet model makes it possible for a client to reach services on a large number of
origin servers, each addressed by a unique Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
The content stored on the servers is of various formats, but HTML is the predominant.
HTML provides the content developer with a means to describe the appearance of a service
in a flat document structure. If more advanced features like procedural logic are needed,
then scripting languages such as JavaScript or VB Script may be utilized.
The figure below shows how a WWW client requests a resource stored on a web server.
On the Internet standard communication protocols, like HTTP and Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are used.

The content available at the web server may be static or dynamic. Static content is produced once
and not changed or updated very often; for example, a company presentation. Dynamic content is
needed when the information provided by the service provider changes more often; for example,

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timetables, news, stock quotes, and account information. Technologies such as Active Server
Pages (ASP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and Servlets allow content to be generated
dynamically.

The WAP Model

The figure below shows the WAP programming model. WAP Gateway/Proxy is the entity that
connects the wireless domain with the Internet. The request that is sent from the wireless client
to the WAP Gateway/Proxy uses the Wireless Session Protocol (WSP). In its essence, WSP is a
binary version of HTTP.

A markup language - the Wireless Markup Language (WML) has been adapted to develop

the optimized WAP applications. In order to save valuable bandwidth in the wireless

network, WML can be encoded into a compact binary format. Encoding WML is one of the

tasks performed by the WAP Gateway/Proxy.

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How WAP Model Works?
When it comes to actual use, WAP works as follows:
1. A user requests a URL by entering it into a WAP device.
2. A WAP device encodes the request into an encrypted, compact binary format suitable for
transmission over a wireless link and sends it to the WAP gateway.
3. The gateway examines the message converts it into a valid HTTP-based URL request and
forwards it.
4. When wmlserver.com receives the request, it fulfills it by returning the requested document
back to the gateway.
5. The gateway converts the HTTP response back into an encrypted, binary format and ships it
off to the WAP device.
6. The WAP device decodes the response and displays the results on the WAP device’s screen.

WAP Architecture
WAP is designed in a layered fashion, so that it can be extensible, flexible, and scalable.
As a result, the WAP protocol stack is divided into five layers:
Layers of WAP Protocol
Application Layer
Wireless Application Environment (WAE). It is much popular among the content developers, as
it contains among other things, device specifications, and the content development programming
languages, WML, and WMLScript.
Session Layer
Wireless Session Protocol (WSP). Unlike HTTP, WSP has been designed by the WAP Forum to
provide fast connection, suspension, and reconnection.

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Transaction Layer
Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP). The WTP runs on the top of a datagram service, such as
User Datagram Protocol (UDP). It is a part of the standard suite of TCP/IP protocols used to
provide a simplified protocol that is suitable for low bandwidth wireless stations.

Security Layer
Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS). WTLS incorporates security features that are based
upon the established Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol standard. It includes data integrity
checks, privacy, service denial, and authentication services.

Transport Layer
Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP). The WDP allows WAP to be bearer-independent by
adapting the transport layer of the underlying bearer. The WDP presents a consistent data format
to the higher layers of the WAP protocol stack, thereby offering the advantage of bearer
independence to application developers. Each of these layers provides a well-defined interface to
the layer above it. This means that the internal workings of any layer are transparent or invisible
to the layers above it. The layered architecture allows other applications and services to utilize
the features provided by the WAP-stack as well. This makes it possible to use the WAP-stack for
services and applications that currently are not specified by WAP. The WAP protocol
architecture is shown below alongside a typical Internet Protocol stack.

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Note that the mobile network bearers in the lower part of the figure shown above are not a part of
the WAP protocol stack.
WAE –Wireless Application Environment
Components of WAE
Addressing Model
Syntax suitable for naming resources stored on servers. WAP uses the same addressing model as
the one used on the Internet that is Uniform Resource Locators (URL).

Wireless Markup Language (WML)

WML is a lightweight markup language designed to meet the constraints of a wireless
environment with low bandwidth and small handheld devices. The Wireless Markup Language is
WAP's analogy to HTML used on the WWW. WML is based on the Extensible Markup
Language (XML).

WMLScript

A lightweight scripting language. WMLScript is based on ECMAScript, the same scripting

language that JavaScript is based on. It can be used for enhancing the services, which have been

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written in WML in the way that it adds intelligence to the services; for example, procedural
logic, loops, conditional expressions, and computational functions.

Wireless Telephony Application (WTA, WTAI)

A framework and programming interface for telephony services. The Wireless Telephony
Application (WTA) environment provides a means to create telephony services using WAP.

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