Local vs NFS disk access

Question

We're buying a new platform for our Oracle server. It'll be...
(4) 1.3ghz 64 bit (Madisons)
48gb memory
(2) 36gb drives - For OS and Swap
(2) 146gb drives - For general work space
The question is where to put the disks that will contain the database proper. There will be only one Oracle server associated with the data on these disks. This is not a distributed DB application of any kind. It is a single server app having sole access to it's data disks.
Our IS group is proposing to use NAS (network attached storage) like a netapp filter which would provide NFS access via it's own OS. Access to the filter would be via 1 or more copper gigabyte connections. The network itself wiould be shared by other users in a large engineering group.
The alternative is to mount the disks directly onto the server itself... no network.
My concern is that the networked approach will be noticably slower than the local mount, especially where network loads can be unpredictable and heavy at times in the engineering group at large. But I have no experience or data to support the fear that it'll be ~that~ much slower.
The activity on our DB is...
DB loading done by C/SQL programs loading large volumes of data, all day long.
DB reads also done by DB loaders (as part of their normal operation) but most important, end users query during normal work hours with many moderately sized queries involving several table joins and retrieval of perhaps a few hundred records.
Does anyone have any experience the performance differences between locally mounted RAID arrays and networked disks?
Does anyone have any before/after stats that may shed some light on what we can expect in the area of performance degredation?
P.S. I had previously posted this message in "Database General" but expect that it should have been posted here in stead.

Answer 1

Just out of Morbid Curiousity- If you get info on those Firewire drives- do they have the "ignore Permissions...." box checked.