I was using a NFS mount for sharing my /usr/portage tree across my local network. However experience showed me that wasn't the best solution. Then I came across a couple of posts in the Gentoo Wiki: The idea is as follows. Build a local rsync daemon that will offer your /usr/portage tree to your network, but exclude the distfiles folder. This offers the possibility to sync each box separately without overloading Gentoo's servers. I can even have each box have its own overlay without interfering with another. Next you can cache every source tarball, avoiding unneeded bandwidth. The NFS share of the /usr/portage/distfiles was doing fine there, but it posed a problem on my laptop. When I wasn't home Ididn't have access to my sources anymore. With a caching proxy on the server, from which I download my sources now, my laptop has all the sources it needs and still I don't download them twice. Personally, I think this is the best way of setting up portage for a LAN with multiple Gentoo boxes. More information and guides can be found here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Download_Cache_for_LAN-Http-Replicator and http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Local_Rsync_Mirror