Help with SP and ODfB Geo Locations and tracert explanation

Bronze Contributor

Hi, I could use some help with explaining a specific tracert to <tenant>.sharepoint.com.

Our SharePoint tenant is located in the Europe data region. This can be verified by visiting https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home#/companyprofile where it says Europe as a location for SharePoint.

But when I ping<tenant>.sharepoint.com or <tenant>-my.sharepoint.com it points to 

13.107.6.151

When I run a geolocation trace by IP (e.g. via https://www.iplocation.net/) this IP is located in Redmond, USA.

 

C:\Users\ivan.unger>tracert iakw-my.sharepoint.com

tracert b-0001.b-msedge.net [13.107.6.151]
über maximal 30 Hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  <interal gateway>
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  <isp gateway>
  3     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  asr2.interx.onstage.at [185.99.82.77]
  4     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  asr1.interx.onstage.at [185.99.82.45]
  5     2 ms     3 ms     1 ms  asr1.eshelter.onstage.at [185.99.82.9]
  6     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  xe-9-1-0-2405.bar1.vienna1.level3.net [212.73.203.9]
  7     2 ms     1 ms     2 ms  microsoft-level3-10g.vienna1.level3.net [4.68.73.142]
  8     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
  9     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 10     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 11     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 12     2 ms     2 ms     1 ms  13.107.6.151

Now, when I run the same procedure on outlook.office365.com I get to outlook-emeacenter.office365.com which points to 40.101.55.50 and this IP is "correctly" located in Austria, where a disclosed Microsoft Datacenter for Exchange is hosted. 

 

Why does the SharePoint tracert not point to any of the other 3 european (Netherlands, Ireland or Finland) datacenters?

 

 

1 Reply

I could really use someone elses input on this matter. Maybe I'm missing something.

I've been referenced this page http://o365datacentermap.azurewebsites.net by Microsoft support, which I already knew. The page mentions this as a geo location for the EMEA Region:

 

United States
Azure Active Directory
Office 365
  • Sway
  • Yammer

 

No word on SharePoint for the US. So why does my tenant resolve and tracert to Redmond, USA? Even my Palo Alto firewall indicates a huge amount of traffic to this IP address, so I'm sure can't be just DNS queries or small stuff.