Swyx SwyxExpress X20 review

Voice over IP systems can save money and reduce support hassles for time-starved system administrators. Unless it's a Swyx VoIP system, as Andrew Webb and Kat Orphanides discovered in our review.

IT Pro Verdict

SwyxExpress was extremely complex to configure, vastly overpriced for what it was, and not very good. It's billed as simple to configure, yet even a veteran sysadmin with both Windows and VoIP system experience would struggle with this device. There are many alternatives out there that are easier to configure and are better value.

K.G. Orphanides's avatar
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Configuring a trunk group.

Configuring a trunk group.

Configuring a trunk group.

Both SwyxWare and the Asterisk server providing the service showed the trunk as down. We eventually traced the problem to the fact that our remote Asterisk server was connected via a VPN which had been set up and started after the Swyx software was already installed. Because of this, Swyx was not listening on the IP address allocated to our VPN, and so couldn't communicate via the VPN.

To get round this issue, we switched to a local Asterisk server, set up with the same test account, and re-configured SwyxWare accordingly. However the trunk failed to register with the account, and was unable to place calls until the Asterisk server was configured to authenticate the incoming connection by source address instead of by SIP registration. This got the trunk working, but only if the Swyx configuration was set to register the SIP connection with the outgoing server. If that option was de-selected, as would be normal with this form of authentication, then the trunk failed again. Trusted source address authentication of this sort is secure and stable, but requires the source to have a static IP address. This won't be an issue for most small businesses, but is worth bearing in mind.

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