I don't understand the environment you're asking about. What does "client machines download the executables into memory at runtime to run locally" mean? What kind of executables? The only protocol I can think of that more or less matches your description would be running a program on an NFS mounted filesystem. I would avoid that if I could...disks are cheap and each client should it's own copy of frequently used executables. "compute intensive applications" are virtually unheard of...since the arrival of systems with multiple super-scalar risc cpu's. If I had a compute intensive application, I perhaps might try to distribute the compute tasks among several systems. Are you arguing for concentrating a lot of compute intensive tasks on a single system? How many systems? What bandwith is the network? What else is the network doing? I would need a lot more info here.