martinibuster - 5:25 pm on Sep 9, 2009 (gmt 0)

Will high quality overcome potential penalties associated with volume network type linking?

Absolutely yes. High quality means that a site has relevant backlinks from many types of sites: news sites, blogs, educational, niche, hobby sites about the topic, and forums. As long as each of those sites have rock solid backlinks I don't think there's a limit.

I know of networks that have fallen but those sites did not have quality backlinks. I know of networks that are thriving, those sites have quality backlinks as described above.