A channel handler contains a cache of all channel-specific data to reduce the overhead of object creation and ensure concurrency during the request. One channel handler for each channel is created and added to the handler registry the first time the device accesses the specific channel driver. The channel handler uses the server configuration file, btt.xml, to retrieve the channel-specific request and presentation handlers for a given device. Request handlers and presentation handlers are defined externally as attributes of a channel handler. The external definition of a channel handler has mandatory attribute values for requestHandler and presentationHandler fields. All other data in the definition is optional, specific to the device, and is maintained in a hash table by the channel handler. For example, the cookies field, an optional parameter for devices using the HTTP communication protocol, defaults to false if unspecified. Specialized exceptions pertaining to retrieving these handlers from the server configuration file are provided with the toolkit.