Outlook 2003 loses connection to Exchange 2003

[Agatha01]

We are experiencing delays with outlook 2003 connecting to exchange 2003.
I have received numerous complains from my clients taking 2-10 minutes for
their outlook to re-connect to exchange expecially when switching between
views.
There has been times some users complained it took up to 25 minutes with the
"retrieving message from exchange" popup runing to just retrieve mssages.
My testing have ruled out all network related issues and seem to narrow it
down to outlook 2003.
We are not using cache mode.
Has anyone seen this problem and have any solution?
Thanks

 

[K. Orland]

It could be a couple of things. Are you running WXPSP2? If so, turn the
Windows Firewall off. It could be how the UDP packets are being handled by
your router or the ISA server client if you have Citrix
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815052).

Basically what happens is that when any Outlook client logs into Exchange,
Outlook registers its IP at a random port for Exchange to send out its new
mail notification. Outlook listens on that socket for any UDP packets.
Exchange registers that socket and sends a UDP packet to the socket when it
receives a new email for that mailbox. When Outlook receives the UDP packet,
it updates its view. If you can't receive the UDP packet, Outlook polls the
server again.

 

[Agatha01]

Windows firewall is off by policy. No ISA in use.
Thanks

 

[Kirrin Jones]

I would like to take a go at it and say that maybe its a DNS problem.
Maybe your workstations are having problems locating your Exchange
server via it DNS name and therefore is taking longer as it has to wait
on timeouts.

You should check to make sure that your workstations can ping your
Exchange server by its DNS name and also resolve it using a ping -a
<ip_address>

HTH

 

[Agatha01]

They are all able to do that.
Anymore ideas?
Thanks