Finder becomes unresponsive when viewing network folders with large amounts of files (OSX 10.6.8)

I have a similar problem with a network drive that is over ethernet on 10.6.x

If the folder has a list of image files that approach 3000 or over, it will slow down the finder.i.e constant beach balling. The only solution is to break the files down into sub folders that have no more than 2000 file each. I also make sure that Calculate all sizes is not on or icon preview.

The problem seems to be that the finder is waiting for the ethernet to return the data but is not getting it quickly enough so beach balls. Simliar to when you try and mount a share that is not on the network anymore.

I suspect it is actually not the finder but the ethernet component on 10.6 that cannot handle either the number of items or the overall data size of the list.

Quicklook may want to read the remote files to generate an icon preview, and that on a slow network can be problematic.

A trick that helps me in similar situations is to uncheck "Show icon preview" from menu View -> Show View Options (Command-j)