Sharpedge Engineering Limited : Westell

Sharpedge Engineering Limited Client Portfolio:

Westell

Important notice
About Westell Limited
Project information

IMPORTANT NOTICE Please note that we no longer have any contact with Westell.
We are unable to perform any repairs to Westell products. Neither can we supply or advise upon ISDN protocol conversion products.

About Westell Limited
Westell Limited designs and manufactures telecommunications protocol interworking solutions. Telecom operators can maximize their investment in network infrastructure by interworking previously incompatible networks or switches.
InterChange iQ provides protocol interworking, transparency, bandwidth & port concentration with advanced grooming, and conversion.

Interworking preserves full support of supplementary services between switches/PBXs using different protocols. Transparency enables 'seamless' operation between switches/PBXs using the same protocol via an intervening private network operating a different protocol.

(This section was paraphrased from the Westell website)

Project Information
We were involved with Westell from January 2001 until December 2001, designing feature enhancements and bug fixes for a number of ISDN protocol conversion products.

Ethernet Alarm and Maintenance Module
The InterChange iQ 8000 enables Service Providers to perform Signalling Conversion and Port Concentration on primary rate ISDN switch ports. It is a modular system that is managed by an Alarm and Maintenance Module (A&M). This collates alarm information from the six access modules, allows the various software elements to be upgraded and generally manages the operation of the system. The A&M module allows the system to be managed by a remote management application.
A previous attempt by Westell staff to replace the board's serial management interface with an Ethernet connection had been abandoned. We were responsible for identifying the many areas of software that were causing the problems, redesigning or fixing them as required and bringing the product through to production.
The problems that resulted in the product being initially abandoned by Westell arose because the Ethernet-managed product is a hybrid that uses both Pascal and C programming languages. The original application was written entirely in Pascal, running on a pSOS operating system. However, the Ethernet-managed replacement ran on VxWorks, which required a considerable quantity of rewritten interface code. The Westell team responsible for porting the application to the VxWorks environment had little understanding of the original Pascal application and as a result, many problems were not found. Sharpedge Engineering however, was able to unravel the myriad of technical problems and produce a working product that met all of its objectives.
The Ethernet-managed InterChange iQ 8000, having been abandoned once, was finally released to production.

Enhancements to QSig to DPNSS Interworking Product
A major customer had noticed a problem with a product that provides conversion between the protocol messaging and information elements of Q.Sig and DPNSS. We were responsible for fixing the bug and re-releasing the software.

Enhancements to Q931 to SS7 Converter
We were responsible for adding a number of feature enhancements to an existing product that provides conversion between the protocol messaging and information elements of Q.931 ISDN and SS7 ISUP.
The changes were rather technical, but the network operator was able to enable or disable the new features as required for different markets, thereby prolonging the life of an already successful product.

IMPORTANT NOTICE	Please note that we no longer have any contact with Westell. We are unable to perform any repairs to Westell products. Neither can we supply or advise upon ISDN protocol conversion products.
	About Westell Limited Westell Limited designs and manufactures telecommunications protocol interworking solutions. Telecom operators can maximize their investment in network infrastructure by interworking previously incompatible networks or switches. InterChange iQ provides protocol interworking, transparency, bandwidth & port concentration with advanced grooming, and conversion. Interworking preserves full support of supplementary services between switches/PBXs using different protocols. Transparency enables 'seamless' operation between switches/PBXs using the same protocol via an intervening private network operating a different protocol. (This section was paraphrased from the Westell website)
	Project Information We were involved with Westell from January 2001 until December 2001, designing feature enhancements and bug fixes for a number of ISDN protocol conversion products.
	Ethernet Alarm and Maintenance Module The InterChange iQ 8000 enables Service Providers to perform Signalling Conversion and Port Concentration on primary rate ISDN switch ports. It is a modular system that is managed by an Alarm and Maintenance Module (A&M). This collates alarm information from the six access modules, allows the various software elements to be upgraded and generally manages the operation of the system. The A&M module allows the system to be managed by a remote management application. A previous attempt by Westell staff to replace the board's serial management interface with an Ethernet connection had been abandoned. We were responsible for identifying the many areas of software that were causing the problems, redesigning or fixing them as required and bringing the product through to production. The problems that resulted in the product being initially abandoned by Westell arose because the Ethernet-managed product is a hybrid that uses both Pascal and C programming languages. The original application was written entirely in Pascal, running on a pSOS operating system. However, the Ethernet-managed replacement ran on VxWorks, which required a considerable quantity of rewritten interface code. The Westell team responsible for porting the application to the VxWorks environment had little understanding of the original Pascal application and as a result, many problems were not found. Sharpedge Engineering however, was able to unravel the myriad of technical problems and produce a working product that met all of its objectives. The Ethernet-managed InterChange iQ 8000, having been abandoned once, was finally released to production.
	Enhancements to QSig to DPNSS Interworking Product A major customer had noticed a problem with a product that provides conversion between the protocol messaging and information elements of Q.Sig and DPNSS. We were responsible for fixing the bug and re-releasing the software.
	Enhancements to Q931 to SS7 Converter We were responsible for adding a number of feature enhancements to an existing product that provides conversion between the protocol messaging and information elements of Q.931 ISDN and SS7 ISUP. The changes were rather technical, but the network operator was able to enable or disable the new features as required for different markets, thereby prolonging the life of an already successful product.