Using a gnome session in FC5 I once had a authorisation notification on an upper panel when I had cause to change system-wide settings (all users) and a network manager icon that told me if I was connected to the network or if the network was no longer functioning.
These were seperated from the other panel by a thick bar

That area has now disappeared.

The network monitor is neither here nor there but I would like to know that I am not opening eMail, or other potentially risky tasks with an active root authorisation.

Any easy way to revert the panel back to the original state ?

I now know this to be the notification area, and I have the 'authorisation icon' back but the network monitor image hasn't come back to educate and inform