nfs over a "slow" network

[Dean Grover ird]

I have a Sun 4/260 running 4.0 which mounts a directory from another Sun
4/260 (4.0) over a VERY slow network interface.  The problem: when I try
and copy a large file (1 Mb) to the NFS partition, I sometimes get
"timeout" errors.  The question: what is the best mount parameter to
change ?  Or will any of that help?  I have used "timeo=30" as a pure
random guess, and this seems to be ok.  My /etc/fstab entry looks like
this:

sun1:/usera /usera ... nfs rw,soft,bg,timeo=30 0 0

Our reasoning for using a soft mount is that we don't want our server to
hang it the other server goes down.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Dean Grover
Hughes Aircraft Company
grover at sed170.hac.com or
adgrover at hac2arpa.hac.com