I'm a client on a home network. I'm wireless, but that isn't the thrust of my question. I would like to know when another user in the network is connected. I run some network intensive software from time to time and I don't want to cripple their internet activities. This does happen when I run the software so I'm not using anymore unless I have some way of knowing that nobody else is connected.

Is this possible to do as a client?

In case it helps, the other OS's in questions are windows and Linux (Kubuntu). The router is a wireless lan. I don't have and can't get access to the lan login (I know it would tell me whos connected).

Thanks for reading,
unholy

i guess it depends what you mean by "connected"... do you mean that the machines are actually switched off? or that they are not using the internet? if it's the former then you can just ping the network and see who says hello, e.g. "ping -b -c2 192.168.1.255" assuming you have a /24 network, the 255 will be the broadcast address, so anything on the network should reply (unless they are configured to ignore icmp broadcasts). outside of that, then there's really very little you can do without a dedicated client on each machine, or something centrally placed on the default route, e.g. the router. if the ping side is a little vague, you also have the option of checking your arp cache (/sbin/arp) to see what clients it knows about, but it'll only know about clients if you've tried to talk to them, e.g. via a ping.

Thanks acid_kewpie,

When my friends log into skype I know when theyre online so I can test the broadcast ping then. If that works I can use it for all ocassions!

Best Wishes,
unholy