Oh, forgot to mention...
I removed all declarations and set procedure from all of my forms and modules!
Code:
Dim db as DAO.Database
Set db = CurrentDb()
I now open the database in my AutoExec Macro and I have experienced significant gains in performance. However as mentioned before, a slow network is a slow network. Not much you can do about that. The OpenDatabase Method (or variations of it) are worth implementing when lots of communication with the back-end is required and there are many users.
As far as networks are concerned, I've noticed that transporting data through either a VPN or another location (basically a different \\whatever than the one the back-end resides in) is pretty dang slow. To remedy this I've guided users that using VPN's or in different locations to use the Remote Desktop Connection to remotely log into a machine on the \\whatever network. From there the transport of the data is quick and all data crunching is being done by that machine. Only the display, keyboard, and mouse are being sent via VPN. This showed the most greatest increase in speed. The problem now is finding idle machines that I can have outside users remote into.
I'm flirting with the idea of an "offline" mode where the afflicted users can copy a version of the back-end to their local machine and do all the functions they need. The any legitimate inputs/changes to tables would then be synchronized with the "live" back-end on the network. I haven't put the time into developing that yet, but that may be in my future.