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Fusion IP Broadband to MS Office 365 is very slow

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2019 11:18 pm
by virtualmike
Hi...

In the past few months, I've noticed that accessing my employer's Office 365 system from a mobile device is very slow. If I turn on Sonic VPN, then the access is very speedy--much more like what I'd expect. It's even faster with 4G LTE, though not as fast as through VPN.

Details:

The server to which my devices connect is outlook.office365.com.

I see this when sending email, refreshing the inbox, or typing email addresses (which do a server lookup for auto-complete). The progress indicator (which varies depending on the operation) spins or flashes for 30-60 seconds. In many cases, the name lookup times out and doesn't complete.

If I turn on Sonic VPN, then it works as expected. Sending a mail takes 2-5 seconds, refreshing the inbox takes about 10-15, and name lookups take 2-5.

office365.com is a Microsoft cloud solution, so there's no definite physical location for the servers. They might be in Redmond, they might be in the Bay Area, or they could be in Europe. It's even possible for my mailbox to migrate from server to server over time. However, this behavior has been consistent for the past few months. (The primary reason I waited for a while to report this is to see whether it might be due to my mailbox having been moved to a server where Internet speeds are poor.)

While I recognize that (a) the actual server can change at any time, due to (1) the fact it's a cloud solution and (2) load balancing, and (b) traceroutes go through a different protocol and may not even go to the same physical server, I've done them for both with and without VPN.

Without VPN:

Code: Select all

[C:\]tracert outlook.office365.com

Tracing route to SJC-efz.ms-acdc.office.com [52.96.18.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     3 ms     3 ms  homeportal [192.168.1.254]
  2    21 ms    20 ms    21 ms  75-33-192-1.lightspeed.snrmca.sbcglobal.net [75.33.192.1]
  3    19 ms    19 ms    19 ms  71.147.212.165
  4    29 ms    29 ms    36 ms  12.122.160.118
  5    23 ms    25 ms    25 ms  12.122.2.78
  6    25 ms    31 ms    28 ms  12.122.163.34
  7    23 ms    23 ms    23 ms  cr83.sj2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.158.9]
  8    55 ms    24 ms    24 ms  12.245.169.38
  9    26 ms    26 ms    29 ms  be-87-0.ibr01.by2.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.9.191]
 10    25 ms    29 ms    26 ms  be-5-0.ibr03.by21.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.18.104]
 11    24 ms    26 ms    24 ms  ae120-0.icr01.by21.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.22.166] 
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15  ^C
With VPN:

Code: Select all

[C:\]tracert outlook.office365.com

Tracing route to SJC-efz.ms-acdc.office.com [40.97.221.114]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    25 ms    26 ms    27 ms  184-23-190-1.vpn.dynamic.sonic.net [184.23.190.1]
  2    26 ms    26 ms    26 ms  ae4-200.gw.equinix-sj.sonic.net [209.148.113.33]
  3    29 ms    27 ms    27 ms  152.ae4.gw.pao1.sonic.net [50.0.2.93]
  4    29 ms    29 ms    30 ms  206.41.106.72
  5    46 ms    32 ms    52 ms  be-88-0.ibr01.by2.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.9.193]
  6    33 ms    30 ms    30 ms  be-5-0.ibr03.by21.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.18.104]
  7    32 ms    29 ms    29 ms  ae120-0.icr01.by21.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.22.166] 
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 11  ^C
While using VPN is a workaround, it's not a long-term solution.

Does this provide enough information for Sonic to open a ticket with AT&T? ...thanks!

Re: Fusion IP Broadband to MS Office 365 is very slow

Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2019 9:17 pm
by virtualmike
BUMP

I reported this issue to Support, who told me, "I recommend bumping your forum post to see if there's anything more on our backend that we can do for you." Support also said that Sonic has no access to change the routing, and recommends that I continue to use VPN.

I specifically asked Support to report this issue to AT&T to ask that it be resolved. However, Support suggests that's not possible. Really? :roll:

Re: Fusion IP Broadband to MS Office 365 is very slow

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 10:08 am
by macmaxbh
Hey virtualmike, I work on Office 365 at Microsoft (and am a Sonic customer; currently being upgraded between Fusion and IP Broadband).

Would you mind sending me an email at max.beckman-harned@microsoft.com with the details of your situation? If you could include:
  • Your account / email address
  • A period of time where you were using your account and saw slowness (so I can pull service-side logs)
  • Your network setup: To confirm from your earlier email, you connecting over wifi to your local home network which is connected via IP Broadband? When you're using VPN, you've enabled OpenVPN on your mobile device?
  • The traceroutes from this post
  • The apps you are using to access Office 365
  • Does this reproduce when using other devices (What if you try and access Office 365 from your computer?)
  • Do you have an outlook.com / hotmail.com / live.com email address? Do you see the same slowness with that account?


I can take a look and see if there's anything we can do / see from our end. From a quick glance those traceroutes don't seem particularly unusual (you're getting directed to the local datacenter near SJC and entering our network pretty quickly) so we'd probably need to dig further.

Re: Fusion IP Broadband to MS Office 365 is very slow

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 8:39 pm
by virtualmike
Wow! Thanks, Max. I forgot this post was lingering out here!

About two weeks ago, the problem suddenly disappeared, and now access to O365 features through my mobile apps is as speedy when directly connected as when connected through Sonic VPN.

It looks like AT&T upgraded the firmware on the modem/router about that time, so perhaps that caused AT&T to change some routing of my traffic?

In any event, it no longer seems to be an issue, but if I run into it again, I will send you the information you requested and help with any additional troubleshooting.

Thanks again--hopefully, you won't have to hear from me. ...cheers!