The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a result of continuous work to define an industry-wide specification for
developing applications that operate over wireless communication networks. The scope for the WAP Forum is to define
a set of specifications to be used by service applications. The wireless market is growing very quickly, and reaching new
customers and services. To enable operators and manufacturers to meet the challenges in advanced services,
differentiation and fast/flexible service creation WAP Forum defines a set of protocols in transport, security, transaction,
session and application layers. For additional information on the WAP architecture, please refer to “Wireless
Application Protocol Architecture Specification” [ARCH].
The Session layer protocol family in the WAP architecture is called the Wireless Session Protocol, WSP. WSP provides
the upper-level application layer of WAP with a consistent interface for two session services. The first is a connection-mode
service that operates above a transaction layer protocol WTP, and the second is a connectionless service that
operates above a secure or non-secure datagram transport service. For more information on the transaction and
transport services, please refer to “Wireless Application Protocol: Wireless Transaction Protocol Specification”
[WTP] and “Wireless Application Protocol: Wireless Datagram Protocol Specification” [WDP].
The Wireless Session Protocols currently offer services most suited for browsing applications (WSP). WSP provides
HTTP 1.1 functionality and incorporates new features such as long-lived sessions, a common facility for data push,
capability negotiation and session suspend/resume. The protocols in the WSP family are optimised for low-bandwidth
bearer networks with relatively long latency.
