> And as for the network bandwidth, this is less of a problem with a
> distributed FS than with NFS since at least it has the chance of being
> stripped across various point to point connections instead of all points to
> one single connection.
You're missing a very important point here. Ethernet connections in an office are almost never point-to-point. Everyone uses a star topolgy. So all 30 of the computers on a floor might go through one gig-e switch.
In theory, the bandwidth of a dedicated gigE connection is comparable to the bandwidth between a PC and another PC on a 1 gig-E switch. In practice, the switch may not be able to handle everyone talking at once.
There may be latency issues with network I/O too. It depends on the network.