Slow connection to Exchange Online for Office 365

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Regs

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Snowflake

#756319 5-Feb-2013 21:31

kemp:

After following several recent threads on this list and other forums regarding Microsoft performance issues in New Zealand, I am pleased to now be in a position to solicit peering sessions at both APE and WIX (details below.) We are also peering with the route servers at both exchanges. Please feel free to email me directly with any related questions and also be on the look out for a Microsoft network engineer at NZNOG next week.

Please excuse my ignorance, but could someone explain what this means from a user's point of view? I guess it means improved performance, but is there anything I should do to my setup to realise the benefits?

thnx

It should provide, when fully up and running:

* Lower latency (better for web apps like CRM, SharePoint)
* Higher throughput
* Traffic that is 'national' instead of 'international' (if that makes a difference with your ISP)
* Network Path that is mostly managed, and monitored, by Microsoft. (So if 'routing' problems occur there are only two parties involved, being Microsoft and your ISP)

these should all come together to provide a better experience in Office 365, CRM Online, Hotmail/Outlook.com, Windows Live Services, Bing searches, etc.

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

infused

65 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 3

#787814 27-Mar-2013 12:15

Just an update: I've got quite a few customers with issues now. Sharepoint is unusable. We've tested it with different ISPs. Even with Korida shaving the routing down to 8 hops.

Has there been any more news on when the cable will be repaired?

Regs

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Snowflake

#788213 27-Mar-2013 20:13

infused: Just an update: I've got quite a few customers with issues now. Sharepoint is unusable. We've tested it with different ISPs. Even with Korida shaving the routing down to 8 hops.

Has there been any more news on when the cable will be repaired?

when you say 'sharepoint is unusable' do you mean in all use cases, or just for uploading/downloading documents?

regarding the cable repair, i've heard that there were issues with getting permissions to sail into Indonesian waters to fix the break and that there is no longer an ETA. Maybe "cable piracy" might be a new way to make money, especially effective if the cable owner has no redundant paths....

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

infused

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Master Geek
+1 received by user: 3

#788244 27-Mar-2013 21:14

Regs:
infused: Just an update: I've got quite a few customers with issues now. Sharepoint is unusable. We've tested it with different ISPs. Even with Korida shaving the routing down to 8 hops.

Has there been any more news on when the cable will be repaired?

when you say 'sharepoint is unusable' do you mean in all use cases, or just for uploading/downloading documents?

regarding the cable repair, i've heard that there were issues with getting permissions to sail into Indonesian waters to fix the break and that there is no longer an ETA. Maybe "cable piracy" might be a new way to make money, especially effective if the cable owner has no redundant paths....

Downloading and uploading is just horribly slow... Not complaining, it's getting me business.

kemp

12 posts

Geek

#809562 1-May-2013 15:10

Three and a half months later and Microsoft's Exchange Online is still as slow as a wet week. Has anyone noticed any performance changes lately - good or bad?

kemp: I use Exchange Online from Microsoft's Office 365 for work, but have slow speeds when sending email. I didn't think much of it until I used Gmail for the first time and the difference was astonishing. I'm on Telstraclear 100 Mb/s down, 10Mb/s up.

To test, I created a new test message in OWA and timed the upload for a 7 MB file attachment. Upload took 95 seconds, which I figure is about 0.6 Mb/s. I then logged into Gmail and did the same thing. The upload took 9 seconds, which I think it about 6.4 Mbit/s. I see the same thing when using a client like Outlook or Apple Mail.

Is it normal for Exchange Online on Office 365 to be that slow? What connection speed should I expect from them? Does anyone know if Microsoft has NZ servers I can connect to see if it speeds things up?

myfullflavour

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Full Flavour

#809578 1-May-2013 15:16

kemp: Three and a half months later and Microsoft's Exchange Online is still as slow as a wet week. Has anyone noticed any performance changes lately - good or bad?

kemp: I use Exchange Online from Microsoft's Office 365 for work, but have slow speeds when sending email. I didn't think much of it until I used Gmail for the first time and the difference was astonishing. I'm on Telstraclear 100 Mb/s down, 10Mb/s up.

To test, I created a new test message in OWA and timed the upload for a 7 MB file attachment. Upload took 95 seconds, which I figure is about 0.6 Mb/s. I then logged into Gmail and did the same thing. The upload took 9 seconds, which I think it about 6.4 Mbit/s. I see the same thing when using a client like Outlook or Apple Mail.

Is it normal for Exchange Online on Office 365 to be that slow? What connection speed should I expect from them? Does anyone know if Microsoft has NZ servers I can connect to see if it speeds things up?

This is precisely why you won't convince me offshore hosting is a good thing.

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infused

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Master Geek
+1 received by user: 3

#809709 1-May-2013 17:26

kemp: Three and a half months later and Microsoft's Exchange Online is still as slow as a wet week. Has anyone noticed any performance changes lately - good or bad?

kemp: I use Exchange Online from Microsoft's Office 365 for work, but have slow speeds when sending email. I didn't think much of it until I used Gmail for the first time and the difference was astonishing. I'm on Telstraclear 100 Mb/s down, 10Mb/s up.

To test, I created a new test message in OWA and timed the upload for a 7 MB file attachment. Upload took 95 seconds, which I figure is about 0.6 Mb/s. I then logged into Gmail and did the same thing. The upload took 9 seconds, which I think it about 6.4 Mbit/s. I see the same thing when using a client like Outlook or Apple Mail.

Is it normal for Exchange Online on Office 365 to be that slow? What connection speed should I expect from them? Does anyone know if Microsoft has NZ servers I can connect to see if it speeds things up?

We've ended up building our own environment for our customers. Exchange 2013, Sharepoint 2013, Web apps etc. Multi tenancy.

PM me if you want more info

paulb001

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#810494 2-May-2013 21:33

Hi all, thanks for taking the time to post messages on Office365 performance here.

We have been working for a little while now on improving connectivity to our APAC Datacentres and we are building out are global comms network. Part of this plan has seen us provision a point of presence in Auckland so that we are able to carry Microsoft destined data on an optimised route to our DC’s to improve performance via lower latency/less hops. The circuit is live now, and we peer at APE and then carry to Sydney, and that connects via Perth to Singapore. However due to the Seamewe3 cable issue we have not announced all our routes as yet to peered ISP's.

That said the cable is now back up and running – http://www.itnews.com.au/News/340964,perth-singapore-undersea-cable-repaired.aspx - and we are starting to open up routes for Office365. NZ ISP’s are free to peer with us and this will help those that had previously non-optimised routing for MS traffic, e.g. Going via multiple carriers, to the US, etc

From NZ you will not notice any issues with Outlook and EAS clients. However it is true that uploading a large file via OWA or say SharePoint online will take a number of seconds longer than say doing something like this locally - this is because it is done in real-time rather than using intermediary caching servers, plus it’s impacted by general open internet capacity. Customers with business grade fast connections and capacity are generally not impacted significantly.

That said we continue to work to optimise our online services from a network, datacentre and product perspective, and you will see us continuously evolve the offering, such as the new releases we made in March around the backend servers (bringing them up to v2013), new front end features, and new plans as well, e.g: http://office.microsoft.com/en-nz/business/ - this also introduced a new html5 OWA client which allows you to work on multiple emails at the same time and, for instance, attach a file to an email and keep working on other mails at the same time while it uploads/attach’s itself.

We genuinely value customer feedback and we are welcome working with any customers on improving the service. If you are experiencing any service issues, please always log them with our support team first via: https://portal.microsoftonline.com/Support/ServiceRequests.aspx

If you aren’t getting any response, or need to speak with us locally, you can reach myself and my team via nzcloud@microsoft.com

Ps. You can also test Exchange connectivity via https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Regards
Paul Bowkett
Microsoft New Zealand

Paul Bowkett
Microsoft New Zealand
http://microsoft365.com
http://twitter.com/paulbowkett
http://linkedin.com/in/paulbowkett

kemp

12 posts

Geek

#840452 20-Jun-2013 17:29

For the last couple of days I’ve noticed a big increase in the speed of our Exchange Online service from Office 365.

I carried out my basic test again today – adding a random-byte 7MB file attachment to an email in OWA and timing how long it takes to upload and send. I did the test three times, for an average upload time of 15 seconds, which I think is about 3.9 Mb/s. That’s a more than six times faster than I’ve ever had on o365 before. I get similar speed increases on desktop and mobile clients.

I don’t know if it’s the improvements mentioned above starting to reach users or TCL (now VFNZ) peering or whatever, but credit where it's due –> well done Microsoft.

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