DFS Monitoring

I have DFS set up and running with replication on 5 servers, geographically located throughout our domain. I set an environment variable in the logon script pointing to \\server\sharename. I’ve tested the failover capability of DFS, by shutting downthe server referenced in the above command. It works, but much slower (45 second delay). I just read where I can use “\\domain name\sharename” with DFS and am testing that. Does anyone know a way to tell which server a client is getting it’s data from, either by connection to the \\domain, or \\server and the server goes off line? Are there any other tools for DFS?
I’m only allowing read-only data in DFS for now. Are there any guidelines or pitfalls for DFS?