How many miles to beta-X? -- d miles, or just one foot
  It is known that the Stone-Cech compactification of a metrizable space X is approximated by the collection of Smirnov compactifications of X for all compatible metrics on X. If we confine ourselves to locally compact separable metrizable spaces, the corresponding statement holds for Higson compactifications. We investigate the smallest cardinality of a set D of compatible metrics on X such that the Stone-Cech compactification of X is approximated by Smirnov or Higson compactifications for all metrics in D. We prove that it is either the dominating number or 1 for a locally compact separable metrizable space. 
Masaru Kada, Kazuo Tomoyasu and Yasuo Yoshinobu