Portfolios :: The BellSouth Wireless Reverse Engineering Project

Overview

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The BellSouth Wireless network has been evolving for the last ten years. As a result, much of the software that controls the network has never been completely documented, and the engineers that built the software were no longer with the company.

Project Involvement

BellSouth Wireless determined that the risk of undocumented systems was too great to continue operations in that fashion. Furthermore, documenting the systems would improve maintainability, upgradability, and enable outsourcing of network maintenance. In November 1996 BellSouth Wireless (then known as RAM Mobile Data) contacted TSI to log onto their network, identify the controlling software and reverse engineer the system to generate engineering documentation.

Reverse Engineering

TSI acquired the software from the entire gateway and administrative systems, analyzed the software, and provide technical documentation of all gateway and client systems. The documentation included architectural design documentation, detailed design documentation, and programmer's reference including all APIs, class hierarchies, file names, and functional descriptions.

Part of the examination included detailed study and implementation strategy of proprietary networking protocols including Mobitex , RTP, and IPP protocols. Also routing functionality was documented including Mobitex to IP, RTP to voice, RTP to SMTP, IPP / RTP interoperability, and peer to peer non-gateway wireless routing.

Executive Reports

TSI provided executive reports on wireless network strengths and weaknesses. Provided consultation on network architecture redesign considerations that would improve performance and scalability to support a wide horizontal market. Many of the suggestions of TSI have since been implemented and BellSouth Wireless has since offered the service to the general public at large.

Y2K Analysis

TSI provided Y2K consultation on the network, administrative, and dispatching software used by the wireless network. The reports identified each software subsystem that had Y2K related faults and presented strategies for correction of the subsystems.

Summary

TSI worked diligently and expertly to provide BellSouth Wireless with the engineering expertise to reverse engineer their networks, administrative tools, embedded systems, and dispatching applications and document the technical information in a clear, concise, detailed, and thorough form. As a result of the consultation and reporting provided by TSI, BellSouth Wireless has improved the performance of it's network, extended the capability of the network, and now retains a complete set of technical documentation on their network.