Users at a subsidiary or branch office that is in a different geographic region from the data center location of their company may experience slower service response times than those users within the same region as the data center location. In order to help multinational customers evaluate whether the service response times are adequate for their branch office users, Microsoft Online Services team has deployed a network connectivity analysis tool in its primary data centers worldwide. This tool will allow an IT professional to check their network connection from their branch offices to the Microsoft Online Services data centers around the world. IT professionals can collect, among other data, primary factors that can contribute to service response times:

·    Round-trip latency

·    Upload bandwidth

·    Download bandwidth

The network connectivity analysis tool is a Web application that can be run in Microsoft Online Services data centers. You can use this tool by selecting one of the following links depending on which data center you want to evaluate network connectivity to.

·    Network connectivity analysis tool in North America (United States) data center

·    Network connectivity analysis tool in Europe (Ireland) data center

·    Network connectivity analysis tool in Asia-Pacific (Singapore) data center

This analysis tool provides instant calculations for network connectivity. You should run this tool several times throughout a day to get a meaningful average, including during some Internet busy hours of your branch office.

By using this analysis tool, you can correlate these data points collected by the tool with the materials published on Microsoft TechNet. The data points and TechNet materials will help you predict the user experiences for your branch office users when using Microsoft Online Services.