My 2 cents - id love to see big improvements with Distributed Rendering.
Currently, its a nightmare.
I have multiple machines, and when i use the DR feature, it takes a few minutes for the other machines to kick in. So when i try using it for an animation, by the time the NODES start rendering, the MAIN workstation finishes the frame and it all starts over again (parsing) and the NODES dont do anything but parse and prepare the scene.
Im not too sure what goes on under the hood, but if there could be a way it somehow gathers all maps/assets and puts them in a pool for all nodes to see so that it doesnt have to reload everything (if this is what is causing the issue).
In anycase, its a struggle and i invested more into NODES this year to improve my speed, but i havent been able to utilise it yet.
This actually sounds like hardware related. More like slow network speed and response time. Make sure, you are connected to nodes via Lan, probably using CAT7 cables and you are utilizing GBPS connection speed instead of MBPS. Improving your network connection speed should help with this problem.