Baffled said:
Outlook 2000 is insanely slow to download mail from our exchange server.
Outlook express downloads about 20 messages a second. Outlook downloads a
message every 3 seconds. What is so different, and how can I speed up
outlook?
Frequently this is a name resolution problem.
And since it 'works' at all, this may be difficult for
admins to realize -- Microsoft DNS name resolution
uses NetBIOS as a backup method, and NetBIOS
resolution (usually) uses DNS as a backup method.
What happens is that one of these is broken -- the other
method (eventually) works, but very slowly.
[In various versions and configurations of Exchange
and the clients each of these name resolutuion methods
have been the primary method for finding the DNS server
so I cannot automatically tell you which one is working
and which is broken -- it depends some on the setup you
have but they BOTH should be fixed in any case.]
Tools like NetDiag and in a domain DCDiag can help
locate the problem. Or direct tools like nslookup,
ping, net view, browstat, etc.
The most common reasons for broken name resolution
that 'seems' to work are failure to make the 'servers' into
name resolution clients (DNS and WINS if you have it)
on their NICs or (incorrectly) trying to put a mixture of
external and internal DNS servers on a client NIC.
Internal clients must use internal DNS servers ONLY
(if you have internal DNS.)
Another less common issue is those people with multiple
subnets who think they don't need WINS.
