What are wireless devices? Are mobile phones wireless devices? These are the questions that this article will be attempting to answer.
Until recently, the term wireless devices referred to computers and other ‘Personal Digital Assistant’ devices that employed the use of wireless technology. Wireless technology is a form of signal transfer that connects these devices by using radio waves. The wireless devices need to be equipped with a wireless network card in order to be integrated in to a wireless network. The network card works in the same way as an Ethernet adapter does. The only difference between the two is that a network card has an antenna instead of a wire jack.
The use of network cards does not apply to mobile phones, which are also wireless devices. Computers in a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) connect via an access point, which is, in turn, connected to the local computer infrastructure. Mobile phone connection, on the other hand, is via transmitters or base stations, which are operated by mobile technology carrier companies.
Many of these mobile technology carrier companies are also able to offer mobile broadband Internet connectivity, along with other browsing services, such as video and data streaming. These services use a protocol called Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). This system works by using servers known as WAP Gateways, which exist within the wireless mobile network provider’s infrastructure and enable mobile broadband access. Of particular interest, is the fact that web pages are not delivered in the HTML format, but as Wireless Markup Language or WML format.