Question : What is an acceptable ping response time from an exchange server?

When I ping my exchange server, my response time is averaging 150ms with 2% packet loss.  I have users complaing that Outlook is slow/hangs/crashes.

When I ping yahoo.com, my response time is averaging 16 ms.

Is this normal?  If not, how can I fix this?

Answer : What is an acceptable ping response time from an exchange server?

OK - if you're connecting to teh ES over an internet link teh 150ms times are not so bad. But the packet loss is not good.

You need to run some more tests:-

A continuous ping rather than just the four quick ones MS gives you by default will help yousee if you get a steady similar response speed (i.e. do they ALL come back in 150ms or are some faster, some slower, etc) and give you some idea how many are missed. Issue the ping command with the -t flag.

A traceroute will help you tell where on the "journey" from your end to the far end the the delays or dropouts are happening.

Pings to anotehr remote destionation a simliar net "disance" away will tell you if the problem is with your internet link, or the head office internet link. Getting someone at head office to try some of these will also help fill in the picture.


Common causes of this sort of problem are

- One or both sites has too much internet traffic for the type of internet connection they hold. This can be legit traffic, or, as we've found on many occasions, it may be that either (a) someone is running peer to peer s/w and using up a significant amount of company bandwidth or (b) someone has a virus which is being used to spam or DOS - again using up a significant percentage of the bandwidth.

- The server is too busy to respond in a timly fashion to all the requests being thrown at it. Does the ES box have enough ram, big enough CPU, enough disk space, and make sure no-one's using it to run CPU sensitive software. We had one customer who crippled their Exchange Server by running a "distributed network" screen saver on it (like SetiAtHome or United Devices) - the "3GL" screensavers built into Windows are also CPU loading - if you must use a screen saver on the Eschange Server, I recommend plain old "blank screen" or simple non-3D scrolling text.