Connectivity to exchange Slow

[nacho38]

Hello. First of all here is my setup.

--Workstations are assigned IP range 10.14.8.0 /22 (255.255.252.0) Via DHCP
most workstations are assigned an address with 10.14.9.x since servers,printers etc run off 10.14.8.x

-- We run Novell 5.0 as our main login servers.


-- Exchange server is 10.14.8.40 AD server is 10.14.8.41


==== Problem ===
With workstation assigned ip of 10.14.9.x using a public DNS server.
When attempting to make a connection to exchange in outlook it is really slow. sometimes have to hit the retry button several times.

It works just fine with a workstation setup with a static IP of 10.14.8.0 /22 with no connectivity problems at all.

==== Other note ==== The active directory server also has 10.14.8.x subnets and 10.14.9.x subnets setup in the reverse lookup zones.

Front end server in DMZ is connects no problem for users on the outside connecting in.

Sorry for the long post. any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[SteveTheGeek]

nacho,
The only thing that occurs to me is that your DHCP-enabled workstations may not be automatically/dynamically getting their IP addresses added to AD's DNS. Is your DHCP service running on a Windows2000 server, and/or are your workstations Active-Directory-aware?
-Steve

 

[nacho38]

Steve,

The workstations are obtaining their DHCP/DNS from our Novell servers. Even if we add a 10.14.9.x workstation with a static dns server of the AD we have problems

 

[sSmokinMoe]

Dude, your problem is simple to fix.
Don't point your workstations to an external DNS server; setup DNS (caching only if necessary) on your AD server. Set the DHCP Server options to point DHCP clients to the internal DNS server. If you search the Exchange web site for "slow connectivity" you should get articles relating to DNS as being the problem. I encountered this recently where an organisation had their clients pointing to their ISP's DNS server. Once the clients were pointing to an internal DNS server the connectivity happened in a flash.