Slow connection to Exchange Online for Office 365

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kemp

12 posts

Geek

#113398 15-Jan-2013 23:09

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?

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paulb001

40 posts

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#746484 17-Jan-2013 17:22

Hi all, I look after Microsoft public cloud services for SMB here in NZ which includes Office365.

As noted there some current issues with the Seemewe cable from Perth to Singapore, this also carries much of our traffic and users may also experience some service degradation due to this. This can be seen with trace routes to mail.office365.com

That being said Microsoft has been working for some time now on product functionality and datacentre improvement and with carriers to optimise Microsoft cloud services traffic to our regional datacentres. This work is on-going and we are currently working on extending our own network to improve service performance overall.

We value this feedback however if you experience any service issues, please always log them with our support team 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 me and our team via nzcloud@microsoft.com

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

paulb001

40 posts

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#746847 18-Jan-2013 13:31

hi all, we have been working on enhancements for some time, with some recent offnet network issues we have been able to expedite the local point of presence - this will allow ISP's to route Microsoft destined traffic to us and we then carry it to our regional datacentres. However we wont realise the full benefit of this until the seamewe cable from Perth to Singapore is repaired - something that is outside our control and affects most internet traffic out of Australia to Singapore.

More on this thread
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=113&topicid=113151&page_no=8#746600

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

paulb001

40 posts

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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