I have a project coming up that involves placing an Exchange server in a environment with a slow (400k), high-latency (1200+ms round trip) Internet connection. This is effectively a branch office for the company. My intent is to use the main office Exchange server as a inbound/outbound smarthost for the Exchange server in the slow location, in order to manage bandwidth effectively. My concern is that SMTP communication between the two Exchange servers will be problematic due to the high latency. Is there a way to engineer/configure around this? I can't seem to find any info about creating connectors for high-latency inter-Exchange server links.

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 21:22:22 +0000, ExchangeAdmin01 wrote: >I have a project coming up that involves placing an Exchange server in a environment with a slow (400k), high-latency (1200+ms round trip) Internet connection. This is effectively a branch office for the company. > >My intent is to use the main office Exchange server as a inbound/outbound smarthost for the Exchange server in the slow location, in order to manage bandwidth effectively. > >My concern is that SMTP communication between the two Exchange servers will be problematic due to the high latency. Is there a way to engineer/configure around this? I can't seem to find any info about creating connectors for high-latency inter-Exchange server links. SMTP works pretty well in most situations provided that the error rate isn't high enough to make it impossible to send messages. Your bigger concerns, I think, will be the Active Directory and CAS (for OAB, free/busy, etc.). Exchange has been deployed in individual AD sites on vessels at sea, using satellite links. It's not ideal but it's do-able. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Hi Rich- Thanks for the reply. We wouldn't be trying to make the server part of the domain; it would be stand-alone. Low-earth orbit satellite Internet has significantly less latency than what we're talking about, which relies on geo-stationary satellites orbiting at 26,000 miles. It sounds like there's no baked-in way to get away from SMTP, or even to tune the SMTP parameters in an Exchange 2010 connector?

On Tue, 11 Sep 2012 01:44:13 +0000, ExchangeAdmin01 wrote: >Thanks for the reply. We wouldn't be trying to make the server part of the domain; it would be stand-alone. You mean it'd be in a different AD forest? >Low-earth orbit satellite Internet has significantly less latency than what we're talking about, which relies on geo-stationary satellites orbiting at 26,000 miles. > >It sounds like there's no baked-in way to get away from SMTP, or even to tune the SMTP parameters in an Exchange 2010 connector? What other protocol would you be considering if not SMTP? As I said, SMTP probably won't be your biggest problem. DNS queries usually time out after 2 seconds. SMTP waits for minutes before it gives up. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP