DISKLESS UBUNTU with squashfs?

[Tomoki Taniguchi]

I want to setup a lab full of diskless workstations for my company.
I have been reading the diskless ubuntu howto on page.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DisklessUbuntuHowto
but this setup uses NFS as the root file system which makes me a
little concerned...
what happens if the workstation loses it's connection to the NFS?
wouldn't the workstation crash?

I have been trying to find a alternate method of providing the rootfs
to the diskless workstation when i came across something promising.
in the howto on setting up diskless mythbuntu clients.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/Hardy/Diskless
"Clients will boot from a read-only compressed file system (squashfs)
which is shared out by the server via nbd (network block device). A
writeable overlay directory is put on top of the squashfs using aufs
("another unionfs"). The overlay directory is a NFS share exported by
the server. Any changes you make on the client are stored in that NFS
share and are available across reboots. The client can identify its
overlay directory using the MAC address of the network card which was
used to boot the system. "
This sounds exactly like what i want to setup, except it being a
mythbuntu client...

anyone figure out how to do this for an ubuntu desktop?

TIA,
Tomoki