The purpose of this standard is to enable complete interoperability of applications using WAVE in a manner that simplifies the onboard vehicle systems, reducing cost and improving performance. Effective use of the memory pages by applications can also minimize configuration management issues over the life of a system. This standard is intended to enable a wide range of applications to be supported by an OBU of the lowest possible cost. The low cost is enabled by removing the need for the OBU to interpret application messages. There is no OBU software representing applications using RM; thus the processing, memory, and configuration management requirements are removed from the OBU. Instead of putting such processing requirements on the OBU, they are placed on the RSU or an application processor remote from the RSU. The only processing requirement is that of interpreting the specific commands and message headers defined herein, which is application independent. The OBU merely serves as a mobile mailbox to carry application messages and data from one RSU to another or as a common interface point to transfer data to other onboard systems. By allowing memory to be assigned to an application at any time during the life of the OBU, future applications can be developed and deployed without onboard hardware or software modification. For applications using RM as a mobile mailbox, with no onboard use of the data stored in memory, there are significant security advantages. By having the OBU treat each application's messages as a bit-stream to be saved and later retrieved from memory, such data can be encrypted in a manner that is not known to the OBU. There is no need for the OBU to support the encryption schemes used by these applications, and such security schemes can be under the total and absolute control of each of these applications.