networked filesystems

[Sebastiaan <sebas@sacred-key.org>]

Hello all,

I have just configured a simple network with one harddiskless computer
that boots from a floppy and mounts a remote root through nfs.

Now my questions:
- which other alternatives are there? I have heard that nfs has a big
overlay. I have also heard about nbd.
- is it true, or can you configure your client so, that when using a
networked filesystem, it tries to cache as much as possible in memory?
- what kind of ethernet is suiteble for a good (fast) working client? How
much difference is there between 100Mb and Full Duplex (I may ask the same
here, excuse for my veil of ignorance)? Will a server at 200MHz
(i586) work fine?

Thanks,
Sebastiaan