outlook global catalog connectivity

[chriske911]

lately we are experiencing slow outlook start ups

investigating this I noticed thru the connection status that outlook is
always connecting to an offsite DC instead of the DC in the same site
or the DC at the site of the XC server

our setup is an HQ office with the datacenter holding one XC server and
two GC servers + a number of branch offices each holding a GC server

XC server is 2k7SP1, Outlook clients are all 2k7SP2

what could be the reason of outlook using an offsite GC?

I already checked SPN entries (exchangeAB/server) and updated the
missing ones

thnx

[Ed Crowley [MVP]]

Have you verified your subnet configuration in AD?
--
Ed Crowley MVP
"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."
.

"chriske911" <chriske...@m.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ujA%23TyifK...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[chriske911]

It happens that Ed Crowley [MVP] formulated :

all sites have their respective subnets assigned to them
every site has the right GC listed
running dnslint shows ho errors
all DNS entries appear correct to me

how does outlook select which GC to use?

thnx

[chriske911]

Ed Crowley [MVP] has brought this to us :

I've stumbled upon a discussion on the msexchangeteam site where I
found a workaround as to force outlook to use a certain GC by adding
the following to the registry:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider\
create a key called DS Server,
assign the value [FQDN of the client site GC] as a string

when I apply this registry hack I then have outlook reconnect thru the
connection status window
I see outlook selecting the given GC and it says connecting but then
outlook is jumping to the same off site GC's again

can I run a test to see what is going on here and why outlook refuses
to connect to the given GC?

grtz

[Ed Crowley [MVP]]

On the Exchange server does the periodic MSExchange ADAccess 2080 event in
the Application event log show all the DCs and GCs you would expect, and
with the proper scoring values?

--
Ed Crowley MVP
"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."
.

"chriske911" <chriske...@m.yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:eBUWgUmf...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

[chriske911]

Ed Crowley [MVP] expressed precisely :

that is what I did after posting my latest reply
explaining the issue here forces me to think the problem over ;-)

I had to promo a DC again and forgot to make it a GC afterwards
when that was done I got that GC in the connection list again

following issue is why our outlook clients sometimes connect to the
other XC server at the other end of the world for public folders
connectivity

this even though there are no PF on that server that our clients need
to connect to
there is no PF replication going on between those 2 servers
each continent has it's own set of public folders that they do not
share with the other continent