I need a netspeed-applet like indicator

Question

I have a hybrid (variable speed) mobile broadband connection that keeps changing the download/upload speeds based on location and time-of-day. So, the netspeed-applet in the previous versions of Ubuntu panel was very useful to get a live feel while running any Internet based application.

But there doesn't seem to be anything to indicate the broadband connection speed in the Ubuntu 11.10 Unity panel. Can anyone please guide me to get this type of indicator? And, no, gnome-panel or the classic-fallback that many people suggest is not a solution! I am very comfortable with Unity as I can see where this is leading - a tablet friendly Ubuntu!

Answer 1

WebUpd8 covered this - I've tested this on oneiric and it does work.

It requires an indicator from a PPA together with some additional scripts:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexeftimie/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indicator-sysmonitor dstat
mkdir -p ~/scripts && cd ~/scripts
wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/sysmon_0.2.tar.gz && tar -xvf sysmon_0.2.tar.gz

Start the indicator

indicator-sysmonitor &

Then in the indicator-preferences:

click "use this command" and copy and paste the following text:

$HOME/scripts/sysmon

Answer 2

As answer to your Xfce panel comment you can use this xfce4-netspeed-plugin which is exactly like the gnome2 netspeed panel applet.
First you need to install some dependencies to compile it. sudo apt-get install intltool xfce4-dev-tools libxfce4util-dev libgtk2.0-dev libxfcegui4-dev libxfce4util-dev xfce4-panel-dev libgtop2-dev and then download the file from the link above and extract tar zxvf xfce4-netspeed-plugin-0.1.tar.gz

Navigate to the folder cd xfce4-netspeed-plugin-0.1 and run these commands. ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && sudo make install

Right click your panel and it will be available to add.