Replication is good but it can be daunting if you dont know how to do it right, believe me you only get one chance to get it right.

My experience with replication is, if you don't need to query the data on the remote server, use Log-Shipping instead, keep it as a StandBy.

Use transactional replication, it takes a little bit more work than snapshot but bandwith wise is the way to go, unless you have gigabit ethernet all over your network or you dont really move that much traffic on your db.

Performance wise get a good server, specially the one where you put the distributor, the db itself won't choke but your performance will take a hit, anything that takes cpu cyles and memory address space affects performance.

And if you have the dough and want to get real fancy, get Legato RepliStor or Legato Co-Standby, This are the best tools, I've used them both and they are a snap to configure and administer. All your data is replicated instantly and you get a cluster/ failover environment that works like a champ. This tools are some real jewels.

Hope this helps

Gerald Nelson MCP/MCDBA