MapleWorks technology guide for jobseekers
As an on-shore software development company specializing in the network communications sector – from network management to telecom products to voice, data and video convergence – MapleWorks will continue to develop new technologies with our clients for the next generation network.Past MapleWorks projects have spanned integrated access devices, network security call processing, and network protocol testing. Future projects will focus on areas such as call control, network management and test automation.
Call control
Call Control is one of the most important parts in the control layer of the next generation network. Signaling is used in the network to set up calls between two end users and to pass information about the call state between the various call agents involved in handling the call. IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to create a signaling network over the IP network. The Real-time Protocol (RTP) is used for media transport. MapleWorks will continue building its expertise on call signaling, call routing and value-added call service, focusing on the following areas:- Protocol stack development and analysis
- System high availability
- System scalability
- Network security
- IP PBX
- Service application
Network management
Network management and support systems are needed for all layers in the next generation network. Management of infrastructure in an Enterprise or Carrier environment is getting more complex as data, voice and video converge into one ubiquitous IP packet-based network.The challenge comes from migrating legacy equipment to next generation infrastructure to work harmoniously and provide a high quality of service to users. Today’s network communications providers are already seeing the commoditization of their services by increased competition. Therefore next generation management systems need to manage more, reduce costs, and be agile to meet further business needs.
MapleWorks will continue to build expertise in the area of next generation network management focusing on the following key areas:
- Understanding trends in management protocols
- Using cutting edge rich Internet application technologies to enable interfaces to the web without compromising usability or functionality that customers have grown accustomed to.
- Developing new methods for fast data store and retrieval to make data collection more scalable
- Devise new algorithms to ensure Out-of-Service (OoS) is maintained across different services
- Devise new methods for quicker fault detection and fault resolution
- Create ways of making the management of devices as generic as possible so that systems can support next generation network infrastructure
Test automation and simulation
The convergence of data, voice and video poses increased challenges for testing, as the network has to perform to the user’s expectations across different media types. The challenges in this area are two-fold. One is to achieve a very high coverage of scenarios in a timely, cost effective and efficient manner. The other challenge is to achieve very high coverage of scenarios. The amount of equipment needed can grow to a point where it would be cost ineffective, or physically unfeasible to create sufficiently complex environment, therefore MapleWorks will continue to focus on the following key areas of test automation and simulation:Automation
- Explore innovative and cost-effective means of tying systems together to operate in a coordinated fashion to achieve test scenarios
- Leverage techniques of massively parallel programming and grid computing to achieve faster test scenario execution
- Develop adapters for commonly used and cutting edge test equipment, so that it can be controlled through an automation framework
- Create generic simulation frameworks that can be adapted to any kind of specific network infrastructures and protocols
- Integrate simulation frameworks with a computing grid to allow simulations to use variable amount of CPU power