The most recent articles from PC Magazine

SwyxWare 4.30

Alex Arias — 2004-08-26T11:36:17.000Z

Alex Arias, PC Magazine, Thursday 26 August 2004 at 11:36:17

VoIP offers potential for cost savings.

VoIP (Voice over Internet) is finally becoming an attractive option for smaller businesses and educational establishments. Swyx is a well established VoIP telephony company and the latest update to its SwyxWare platform adds to its attraction.

SwyxWare 4.30 is an IP telephony solution for internal and external communication that should interest any size of company looking for cost savings. It's a software-based IP PBX (private branch exchange) that also performs traditional PBX tasks and integrates with email applications.

The update incorporates a few tweaks that improve support for phones and add more administrative functions. A noticeable visual difference is the change from the traditional Blueline skin to LoonaClassic as the default for SwyxIT, the user interface.

There have been improvements to this UI, with additional hotkeys, wizards to aid recordings and support for Internet Explorer.

One of SwyxWare's strengths is its integration with Microsoft Outlook - it can for example redirect calls based on your calendar entries. Other features include caller ID and call divert functions. The system is managed through the standard Microsoft Management Console.

Swyx offers a range of phones, headsets and handsets, including the new top end SwyxPhone L440 with a larger integrated LCD panel.

Swyx's IP based software and hardware has a lot to offer and is well worth a look. However, it's a Windows-only system and many smaller companies might find that exploiting the full functionality takes some time.

Contact: SwyxWare

www.swyx.co.uk

Specifications:

OS support - server Windows Server 2000 and above
OS support - client Windows 98 and above
QoS Support G.165, RSVP and 802.1p
Voice encoding G.711

Price:

10-user licence - £1,200

four-channel ISDN gateway - £712

Swyx IP phone L420 - £429

(all ex VAT)

Empirix E-Test Suite 5.1

Ashley McKinnon — 2002-06-11T10:36:36.000Z

Ashley McKinnon, PC Magazine, Tuesday 11 June 2002 at 10:36:36

A very powerful tool for companies serious about website efficiency.

E-Test Suite 5.1 is a set of tools designed to test and report on all aspects of a website, allowing for as much troubleshooting and capacity planning as needed.

One component of this powerful tool allows an administrator to test a website for potential problems. All objects encountered on a page are recorded and tested for functionality.

To check the performance and possible scaleability of a site the e-Load module simulates multiple users and browsers accessing the targeted site.

It measures the effects on the site and gives summaries of any possible problems in specific areas.

E-Monitor sits on the web server and monitors live traffic from users. If any problems become apparent, it will alert an administrator and determine whether any solutions are available.

For tracking down and identifying any defects within a site, the d-Tracker module scans web-based applications for any possible problems.

ServerStats compiles a multitude of statistics for the targeted server. Server-side activity is screened while tests are conducted, and any possible problems are highlighted.

For more detailed information, e-Reporter summarises all information. This can then be analysed in WebReporter, or alternatively exported for use in Excel.

Although reports can be filtered, the WebReporter interface is a little confusing at times and can lead to an administrator accessing the wrong information.

Price: (as reviewed ex. VAT) £10,335

Contact: Empirix 01344 668 080

www.empirix.com

Zeus Web Server 4

Alan Stevens — 2002-06-06T11:58:43.000Z

Alan Stevens, PC Magazine, Thursday 6 June 2002 at 11:58:43

A top performer aimed primarily at service providers and larger enterprises.

Zeus Web Server 4.0 can be run on all major implementations of Unix including AIX, Solaris and Tru64, with both 32- and 64-bit implementations now available for the HP-UX platform.

Linux is also supported, with a Pentium-class processor, 32Mb of Ram and 10Mb of hard disk drive space minimum.

It's aimed at internet service providers and large enterprise customers looking to host multiple sites and demanding web-based applications. These need more in terms of hardware so, for our Labs tests, we used Red Hat Linux 7.1 on a Dell PowerEdge 2550 equipped with dual 1GHz Pentium III processors, 512Mb of memory and Raid storage.

Installation is simple and configuration and management is achieved via an intuitive browser interface. The main task here is the definition of one or more virtual sites, with the ability to host these over multiple clustered web servers, if required.

Fully HTTP 1.1 compliant, Zeus Web Server is a very compatible solution with support for both Internet Server Application Programming Interface and Netscape Server Application Programming Interface, as well as its own Application Programming Interface.

Plus there's a sand-boxing feature for the secure testing of Common Gateway Interface scripts, with 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer and Public Key Infrastructure facilities built in.

Zeus Technology claims that its non-blocking architecture requires fewer processes than rivals such as Apache and IIS, allowing it to scale better.

To test this we used WebBench 4.0.1 to compare the new software against the latest Apache 2 beta software, also running under Linux, and the Windows 2000-based IIS 5.0.

When handling static content there was little to choose between the three. All exceeded the limits of the bandwidth available on our test network.

However, when we switched to dynamic content Zeus Web Server 4.0 was faster than Apache by up to 42 per cent, with at times a massive 102 per cent margin over IIS.

Java performance has also been enhanced, with support for the AJPv13 protocol and new native interfaces for Tomcat and Jserv. The core engine has been optimised to handle large data flows, in as well as out of the server. Other features include multi-lingual administration and content delivery.

However, it's the performance enhancements that really make this stand out. The edge it has over Apache and IIS go a long way in compensating for the only major drawback to the solution: the cost.

Price: (as reviewed ex. VAT) £1,100 per server (up to two processors); plus £550 per additional processor.

Contact: Zeus Technology 01223 525 000

www.zeus.co.uk/products/zws/