Optimizing Office 365 network performance comes down to removing unnecessary impediments.

User data and processing in Office 365 is distributed between many Microsoft datacenters. There is no single network endpoint to which client machines can connect. Services are dynamically optimized by the Microsoft Global Network to adapt to the geographic locations from which they are accessed by end users.

Shortening the network path to Office 365 entry points by allowing client traffic to egress as close as possible to their geographic location can improve connectivity performance and the end user experience in Office 365. By treating Office 365 connections as trusted traffic, you can prevent latency from being introduced by packet inspection and competition for proxy bandwidth. Allowing local connections between client machines and Office 365 endpoints enables traffic to be dynamically routed through the Microsoft Global Network.

The optimum connectivity model is to always provide network egress at the user’s location, regardless of whether this is on the corporate network or remote locations such as home, hotels, coffee shops and airports. Generic Internet traffic and WAN based corporate network traffic would be separately routed and not use the local direct egress model. This local direct egress model is represented by Microsoft in the diagram above.