Outlook 2k3 WAN delay

[jasonb]

I have an exchange server 2k3 in the main office, bonded t-1's (3.0
Mbps) for connection. Remote office has a single T-1. All clients
run Outlook 2k3 with sp3 and Xp with sp2. My problem is that when an
attachment is added to an email at the remote office, their is a delay
when that message is sent. Like wise, when an attachment is received
at the remote office, theirs a delay when opening the message. The
delay can range anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes
depending on the size of the attachment.
What is the best mode to run outlook in my scenario? Cached, RPC over
http, or
Regular.
Also, are their any tweaks I can make to the server, clients, or
network hardware to improve performance? Anyone have experience with
Wan acceleration technology, ex riverbend?

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

Difficult to answer since you don't say how many users are in the remote
office and/or what the utilization is on their T1. In any event, cached
mode (or cached mode using rpc/https) is going to be your best bet since
this connection type isolates the user from network disruption/outages.

I will warn you however, if setting up cached mode and the mailbox is of any
great size that it can kill the WAN circuit. For example, moving 100MB of
data over a T1 would take about 10 to 15minutes not including things like
downloading the offline address book. Of course this time assumes that a
user gets the circuit all to themselve.