The Wireless Internet Explained
Learn to understand technologies and standards of wireless computing as they relate to the Internet.
TABLE OF CONTENTS The Wireless Internet Explained
5.3: Enabling applications for wireless access
5.3 Enabling applications for wireless access
Eventually there will be many applications that are particularly suited for wireless access. Designing them to take advantage of the strengths of typical mobile technologies will be an important factor. But to get started we need to look at how existing applications can be made to operate with a wireless infrastructure. Intuitively, we might think that there is one ideal way to tailor the applications so that they can be used in a mobile environment.
5.3.1 Access methods
In actuality, after some examination, we see that there are actually many different options, including those shown in the following chart.
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Client-side
Server-side
Both
Native
Web
SMS
Enhanced
WAP
Proprietary
Terminal services
Native
Most applications will actually work over wireless links. Unless they are very sensitive to latency, require very high bandwidth, or implement poor error recovery, they should work over both circuit-switched connections and packet data networks. The applications are unaware of the network that lies underneath them. However, it is important to realize that the response time might be slow and the connections unreliable.
The option is the simplest to implement but it is also the least appealing to users with most current wireless networks. It does work satisfactorily over wireless LANs and will eventually be acceptable over 3G networks.
Enhanced
The most notable problems with native mode are the poor performance of the network and possible security issues when operating over public networks. It is possible to impose an additional...
Copyright Butterworth-Heinemann 2002 under license agreement with Books24x7
