A couple of broadband questions
 

I've only just moved from dial-up to broadband (cable, connection via ethernet), and have a couple of questions:

1. Is there an easy way to cut the connection temporarily (for instance if I want to carry out some tasks as root, I'd rather do this with the PC offline)?

2. I liked having the graphical "view data rate" window provided by the KInternet dial-up tool. Is there an equivalent utility that I can use with broadband?

Yours,
Rob:)

For Q1 it's very easy. In a root consol do ifdown ethX X=ethernet port eg 0. To bring the link back up do ifup ethX

For Q2 Its really not that important because this is a digital signal and should remain constant and the data rate should be viewable via the router connection software. Remember a serial modem is analogue and converts audio to digital transmission. I use a system monitor called GKrellm which includes network monitoring.

1. You could try /etc/init.d/network stop and /etc/init.d/network start to start it again.

2. I use Superkaramba with the TechMon theme.

HTH
Baldrick

Thanks for the answers. Actually, I found that I could monitor network activity with the KDE System Guard. I'd already found it and used it a little, but I hadn't realised that I could add and remove the default sensors.

Rob

there's no need to stop the network when you are logging in as root.

root is the system and in always running processes....

your box would only be less secure if you downloaded things (Etc) using the root account and executed them.

ok maybe using a window mananger is less secure, but really there is no sense in doing this...