I've put together an i386 box running 1.5_ALPHA2.  It's exporting a 90GB
filesystem via NFS.  It's quite quick for things we do directly on the
filesystem (ffs+softdep), but if we try to do things via NFS, it's
tremendously slower.  It's quicker to scp a file then copy it via NFS.
The network is 100MB, and watching the hard drive lights when copying
things shows that NFS copies things synchonously, while scp and other
local accesses make use of the soft updates.  I'd like to speed things
up, but I don't know how best to do that.  Hints, pointers, suggestions
welcomed.

Tracy J. Di Marco White
Project Vincent Systems Manager
gendalia@iastate.edu