outlook and vpn

[joodian]

how do i speed up oulook connection to an exchange 2000 server over a cisco pix vpn connection

 

[Roady [MVP]]

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how do i speed up oulook connection to an exchange 2000 server over a

cisco pix vpn connection

 

[joodian]

Thanks for reply
I have a outlook 2000/xp/2003 clients connecting through 2mb broadband/adsl lines from home via a cisco pix vpn firewall. All other network resources are available at good speed. Servers are win2000 adv svr with exchange 2000 some clients connect ok but some find outlook takes 5-10 mins to open or exchange not availible error appears on 2nd retry it connects ok. On outlook/office xp/2003 the a requesting data progress bar sometimes appear. OWA seems to work ok. After reading some of the other posts it seems i may need to check the hosts file. Remote desktop and other apps seem ok and run at good speed. Is there any other info that would be helpful. Thanks

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote]

Thanks for reply.
I have a outlook 2000/xp/2003 clients connecting through 2mb
broadband/adsl lines from home via a cisco pix vpn firewall. All other
network resources are available at good speed. Servers are win2000 adv
svr with exchange 2000 some clients connect ok but some find outlook
takes 5-10 mins to open or exchange not availible error appears on 2nd
retry it connects ok. On outlook/office
xp/2003 the a requesting data progress bar sometimes appear. OWA seems
to work ok. After reading some of the other posts it seems i may need
to check the hosts file. Remote desktop and other apps seem ok and run at good speed.
Is there any other info that would be helpful. Thanks

You shouldn't need a hosts file. Can you ping the Exchange server, from
the remove workstations, by name? Check your DNS settings.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In addition to Neo's reply -

All a hosts file would do is allow you to resolve the server name to the IP
address, which DNS or WINS ought to be able to take care of if your PIX VPN
supports it. It won't speed anything up. As long as you can ping the server
name & get replies, you're connected.

W/r/t speed, there isn't too much you can do really unless both sides get
faster connections. I usually recommend that remote users work offline by
default w/scheduled automatic syncs in the background - performance is
usually better this way.

 

[joodian]

I suspected ther wasnt much could be done with the speed. Your other comments about background sync i will try out with a couple of test users. Again Thanks to all who replied. I have another question but dont know if it can be answered here or if i have to post it on another disscussion. My onsite exchange users create folders under their inbox to store important emails they cannot delete and need access to them all the time. This causes large mailbox sizes (500-1000gb) i could create pst files on the local workstations to reduce these sizes but they would not be backed up in the event of a workstation hard disk failure. Could i place the pst files in a shared folder on the network so they would be backed up each night or within their roaming profile. Will this create too much traffic. Is their a another alternative ?

 

[joodian]

sorry i meant 500-1000mb

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote]

I suspected ther wasnt much could be done with the speed. Your other
comments about background sync i will try out with a couple of test
users. Again Thanks to all who replied. I have another question but
dont know if it can be answered here or if i have to post it on another
disscussion. My onsite exchange users create folders under their inbox
to store important emails they cannot delete and need access to them
all the time. This causes large mailbox sizes (500-1000gb) i could
create pst files on the local workstations to reduce these sizes but they would not be backed up in the event of a workstation hard disk failure.
Could i place the pst files in a shared folder on the network so they
would be backed up each night or within their roaming profile. Will
this create too much traffic. Is their a another alternative ?

You could place those .PST files on the server but that's isn't a great
solution - besides if you have that much disk space on the server why not
just let them leave that data in their Exchange mailbox?

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

I agree with Ben on that one....and note that MS doesn't support accessing
PST files from a network drive -
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=297019
Also might want to check out
http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq_appxf.htm

 

[Saudade]

In addition to Neo's reply -

W/r/t speed, there isn't too much you can do really unless both sides
get faster connections. I usually recommend that remote users work
offline by default w/scheduled automatic syncs in the background -
performance is usually better this way.

I'm a remote user with OL2002 and this is how I do it. I only "connect" if
I need to update any rules or use the Out of Office. Works really well this
way.

 

[Saudade]

I suspected ther wasnt much could be done with the speed. Your other
comments about background sync i will try out with a couple of test
users. Again Thanks to all who replied. I have another question but
dont know if it can be answered here or if i have to post it on
another disscussion. My onsite exchange users create folders under
their inbox to store important emails they cannot delete and need
access to them all the time. This causes large mailbox sizes
(500-1000gb) i could create pst files on the local workstations to
reduce these sizes but they would not be backed up in the event of a
workstation hard disk failure. Could i place the pst files in a
shared folder on the network so they would be backed up each night or
within their roaming profile. Will this create too much traffic. Is
their a another alternative ?

First, What Ben said.....

As an alternative, if there aren't too many users, you could create a Public
Folder for each person secured to that individual user. The files still
take up Exchange server disk space but keeps the Mailbox smaller. Smaller
mailboxes generally mean faster synch times due to smaller OSTs. These
could be used to "archive" older messages.

In any event, be aware of OST and PST size limits in OL.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306076&Product=offxp

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;288283&Product=out

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;296088&Product=out