WAP Takes a Pounding
Pages: 1, 2, 3
WAP as a Band-aid
Even as WAP phones roll into stores to deliver light web content to wireless devices at late-1980s modem speeds (9600 bps to 14.4 Kbps), the hype has shifted to faster wireless networks that may not need to relay on gateways to convert data between web and WAP formats.
Nokia recently tested a packet-based wireless service, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), for the first time out of the lab. Unlike circuit-based services, which rely on a single, direct connection for the length of the call, packet-based services work like the Internet, delivering data in small packets over an open channel to their end destination where they are reassembled.
GPRS backers were originally hyping the system's promised speeds, in the ISDN range around 115 Kbps. But just recently, according to Psion's Davies, they've dropped back from these claims and are instead pushing its "always on" feature as the prime selling feature. The reason: callers share a data channel with everyone in their cell. As with a cable modem or LAN, the more people online, the slower your stuff moves. Real speeds, Davies said, are more like 43 Kbps -- and that's with only two callers on a cell. Add 14 more and it drops to a crawl.
Even if GPRS doesn't deliver, G3 networks are being envisioned to deliver rich multimedia content to wireless devices. These third-generation networks may deliver speeds comparable to DSL or T1 lines. Combine that with greater processing power, and the need for WAP as web protocol lite fades away.
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WAP as the Weak Link
Perhaps the most damning charge is that incompatibilities between the security protocols for WAP and the Web require Phone.com's WAP gateway to first decrypt messages in one format and then re-encrypt them in the other. Secure messages that come in from the caller using WTLS (WAP transport layer security) must be decrypted, then re-encrypted in something like SSL before being passed onto the bank or credit card company or whoever's receiving it. That means that for a moment, the transaction is insecure. (That's the moment you paint the bulls-eye on.)
Phone.com's Schuerholz says the problem's being addressed in WAP version 2.0 under design, with the goal of allowing the merchant or bank's secure server to include WTLS encryption. Until then, he says, transactions can be called secure if the WAP gateway sits within the secure party's firewall.
Such gaps in forethought lead even some of the technology's strongest advocates to look on it as something of a stepchild. "I guess we all agree that WAP, the way it is today, sucks," said Häkan Mitts with Nokia's mobile phone research unit, speaking to a WWW9 audience.
But it may be that it only sucks in the eyes of technical researchers who had their sights set on something better. For the hundreds of millions of users expected to log onto WAP phones over the next few years, the experience of accessing their favorite web content and applications through a tiny green interface may be good enough to keep them fascinated ... at least until the next great thing comes along.
David Sims was the editorial director of the O'Reilly Network.
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