WD> Hmmmmm ... would a totally different zone help? Even just as a WD> test-platform?
I seem to recall something like that being proposed back in the late 1990's in order to facillitate the new-fangled ip based nodes. Later the idea was to give all ip nodes their own zone. To be honest I am glad that never happened. A test zone might be something worth investigation but given the numbers I think it would be wise to stick together as much as possible.