While this is not news recently I’ve found network speed a real pain to deal with using image browsers. Even on a Gb network opening and zooming high megapixel RAW files is slow. Now I use catalog apps for a first look at images instead of an image browser. The catalog app (Expression Media 2.01, Lightroom 2.1, Bibble 5) will build and store thumbnails and previews on a local drive. This makes rating and selecting images feel a lot faster over a network.