Is OfficeXP suited for WAN use?

[Rick M.]

I work for a very large system integrator and with a number of accounts/clients now, we see serious problems with slowness accessing documents on network shares. It can take 4-5 minutes to open a Word doc!!! I hope you agree with me this is not acceptable! I would like to probe the Microsoft customer base to see what people are doing to solve this. FYI on one account they troubleshooted this for 5 months applying patch after patch per Microsoft Support, and exhausting network analysts and AV software specialists resources. Be assured all KB Q articles have been carefully considered and in most cases completed. Management is now asking if this problem is really a serious flaw in Office and that it's intended use is for LAN not WAN. If this is the case, they want to know what Microsoft is going to do to fix this. If you have any information leading to a possible solution to this problem please respond. RM

[word winword slow slowness network access share shares lan wan officexp office av antivirus anti-virus documents]

 

[Rob Schneider]

I work for a very large system integrator and with a number of accounts/clients now, we see serious problems with slowness accessing documents on network shares. It can take 4-5 minutes to open a Word doc!!! I hope you agree with me this is not acceptable! I would like to probe the Microsoft customer base to see what people are doing to solve this. FYI on one account they troubleshooted this for 5 months applying patch after patch per Microsoft Support, and exhausting network analysts and AV software specialists resources. Be assured all KB Q articles have been carefully considered and in most cases completed. Management is now asking if this problem is really a serious flaw in Office and that it's intended use is for LAN not WAN. If this is the case, they want to know what Microsoft is going to do to fix this. If you have any information leading to a possible solution to this problem please respond. RM

[word winword slow slowness network access share shares lan wan officexp office av antivirus anti-virus documents]

Office XP is suited for WAN use. However the WAN has to be suitable and
fit-for-purpose, and if not then alternative work processes, user
training, and system architecture (by the systems integrator?) would be
required.

I agree 4-5 minutes to open a Word file is not normally acceptable.
However, this is not the fault of Office. There are so many other
factors. It's no possible to properly address these factors here. And
since this seems to be happening at a number of your client sites, there
may be a common root cause, e.g. do they all have the same sort of
networking infrastructure?

As an employee of a "very large system integrator", I'm sure that your
firm can get a proper handle on this and meet the needs of your
customers. I would suggest not trying to point the finger at Office or
wait for updates by Microsoft of Office.

 

[Rick M]

I'm not sure we can take your word that OfficeXP is suited for WAN use. My take is we should design a network around OfficeXP and in fact this doesn't make sense. I need to confirm this, but it's my early understanding that other programs, like acroread (and perhaps powerpoint, excel) do not have the same problem. Primarily WinWord. Extensive tests have been made on network utilization and all pass with flying colors. More to come later my friend...

 

[Rob Schneider]

I'm not sure we can take your word that OfficeXP is suited for WAN use. My take is we should design a network around OfficeXP and in fact this doesn't make sense. I need to confirm this, but it's my early understanding that other programs, like acroread (and perhaps powerpoint, excel) do not have the same problem. Primarily WinWord. Extensive tests have been made on network utilization and all pass with flying colors. More to come later my friend...

You don't have to take my word. You don't know me from Adam. You asked
the world for advise. I told you what I know. You can ignore this
advise if you like.

No, I didn't say you should design your wan around Office XP. I said
the WAN has to be fit for purpose and work given the organsiations work
processes. However, if your use of the WAN is to have extensive use of
Office XP, then I guess you do need to design the WAN around Office XP.
That's how networks are supposed to be designed--to operate to support
the applications and the users' expectations when using those
applications. Why would that be controversial?

For example, if you keep 750 mb Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) files
on file servers in Australia and your users are in France, then you
better have a good enough WAN to get that file delivered in a reasonable
amount of time. Another example is where you store templates for Office
apps in central locations accessible by WAN's. That really slows down
Office. I would say that these is not appropriate configurations for
Office, regardless of the configuration of the WAN. But I've seen people
try these things and then blame Microsoft.

Acrobat Reader loads files completely differently than Office. The best
way for WAN use of these files is put these PDF files on a web server,
and then load these files across the WAN via a Web Server/Browser
software. The Browser and Adobe Reader will read the file in small
chunks enabling the reader to view the initial pages while subsequent
pages are loading the background.

I would recommend you not try to use how other programs, especially
Acrobat Reader, works on networks in support of your case against
Microsoft Office.

As you should realize, with Office files, the programs are reading the
files as "source code" and need to load the entire file before it can do
anything.

Testing for network "utilization" is irrelevant other than to support
the use of telecommunications buzzwords in management meetings. High
utilization means your network is "utilized". Good. That's what
networks are for. To be used. I would hazard a guess that your WAN is
100% utilized with all these Office files flowing around. Utilisation
does not relate to user satifisfaction (file transfer feed, latency,
responsiveness, etc.).