Access Point / Slow Sync

Question

Hi,

new here so hope this is the right category. :)

I recently got migrated to O365 and trying to understand / find a few technical documents or explanations how my email sync works.

I am located in Australia but our Exchange databases in O365 cloud are located in Europe. Generally speaking it does work fine. I can send and receive emails and my sync from local Outlook works. But far too often it is extremely slow. (The sync, not Outlook)

How are emails / data transferred from Europe to Australia?

Is traffic send via public internet or does my Outlook connect to MS cloud locally in Australia and uses dedicated network routes from MS itself?

Is it possible to test this for me somehow?

Any available tools or links would be great! :)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi Ruel,

thanks for following up on this. So far I did not get the results I was hoping for, but on the positive side we did already learn a lot :)

We are still working / testing through the provided links on network planning and performance tuning, DNS geolocations and Tips for Optimizing network, etc.

But generally speaking we already figured out that is does not make a difference if I connect to servers in my region (outlook-apacnoth.office365.com), server from the US (outlook-namwest.office365.com) or server from Europe (outlook-emeast3.office365.com). Every email we tested, no matter the size of attachments, took the same amount of time reach my Outlook inbox locally.

The big difference for us is only that if I connect to local O365 servers in APAC, I am not using any bandwidth from our internal network because I properly go via public internet (or MS cloud) depending on where or how I am connected.

I would be interested if it makes a difference for me if I migrate my Exchange database from Europe to Australia, but due to the data protection laws in Europe I am unable to do this I think. Also still investigating this.

cheers

Marco

Answer 2

Hi Marco,

Feel free to share us some updates when you have time. Do you need further help from our team? 

Best Regards,

Ruel

Answer 3

Hi Marco,

From the server address, your data center is in Europe, also, you can confirm this information in Office 365 Admin Center > Settings > Organization Profile > Data Location.

Generally, Office 365 Online Services are working fine no matter where your data center is. 

If you have problem when using Outlook, I suggest you post a new thread with more detailed information.

Thanks,

Franky

Answer 4

Hi Ruel,

thanks heaps for the quick reply!!

I quickly did the test which was described in one of the blogs to simply PING outlook.office365.com.

Here I did get back outlook-emeaeast2.office365.com, which is from my understanding so far indeed a European server.

Not quite sure yet how to configure my network in order to connect somewhere within Australia, but I guess I have read all the links in more details first. :)

Thanks again for help, much appreciated!

cheers

Answer 5

Hi Marco,

Email sync is related to many factors such as network, bandwidth, email size.

You can try and check this blog, which tells how to optimize and troubleshoot Office 365 Network Connectivity. Please consider the tip about DNS Geo Location, that the most important check is the DNS. Connecting to the nearest Datacenter may contribute faster connectivity. Try also to use NAT support in Office 365, to help improve the network.

You can see some tools and related network optimization articles in the Network planning and performance tuning for Office 365.

Feel free to post back if you have further questions.

Best Regards,

Ruel