Network icon missing when connected over vnc
 

I'm having problem with the network icon missing (the one in the Gnome topbar) when I connect to my server over vnc. It is visible when I'm physically on the machine, but I can't see it when I connect over vnc? Everything else seems to be ok (sound, date and time...).
The problem is that I want that machine to connect to a VPN, but I don't know how without the network icon and ofcourse I want to do it remotely.

The machine runs Scientific Linux 6. I've configured vncserver to run as a service, so I don't have to login on that physical machine for vnc to start. Like this in
/etc/sysconfig/vncservers

VNCSERVERS="2:desktopuser"
VNCSERVERARGS[2]="-geometry 1440x900 -nolisten tcp"

Any help is greatly appreciated.

BR!