[Targon]

I've always wondered why the Network Preference Pane for each Port including, Airport, Internal Modem, Bluetooth Modem etc offer the ability to display "Status in Menu Bar" for each item, EXECPT Ethernet!!!

I hope this is added in Leopard, it would be handy to see Ethernet activity in the menu bar without having to go to System Preferences/Network all the time when issues occur. Windows Network Tray icon provides this.

[MacosNerd]

Perhaps because these are wireless and people may be interested in knowing the signal strength, where as ethernet has really no signal strength for people to worry about.

iStat pro a widget probably gives you everything you need, while its not on the menu it does give you the data you're looking for.

[Targon]

Did i mention the Internal Modem has status menu bar item? Yes? No strength there. The idea behind the menu bar item is actually "Status" you can see this in the network pref pane its always says "Show Status in menu bar". Years before we even had Wireless, the Finder always provided us with modem status an time connected in the menu bar in Mac OS 9x and below.

What triggered my post was the recent headache i have been thru with a Linksys WAG54Gv2. On the PC that was connected to this router over ethernet wire the task bar icon intermittently flashed "Network cable unplugged" then network connection established". Thinking it was just a cable or a fried Card in the PC, i hooked up another motherboard....same issue. Hooked up my Powerbook to same port with same cable. I had internet an all was fine. I didn't realize until i actually launched the network pref on the iMac that was wired to the router than the status light flashed from red/green. Later i discovered the WAG54Gv2 had fried caps and would only allow a wired connection if i throttled the Ethernet speed on the iMac and the PC card to 10baseT Full Duplex.

So, had i seen an ethernet status indicator in the tool bar in OSX i could have come to a conclusion as to what was going immediately. So you see this feature would be quite valuable.

[red rocket]

Originally Posted by Targon

Did i mention the Internal Modem has status menu bar item? Yes? No strength there. The idea behind the menu bar item is actually "Status" you can see this in the network pref pane its always says "Show Status in menu bar". Years before we even had Wireless, the Finder always provided us with modem status an time connected in the menu bar in Mac OS 9x and below.

The internal modem has a ‘status’ mbi because modem implies dialup access without flatrate. Ethernet implies flatrate broadband, always on, connection time irrelevant.

For what it's worth, there's an option to show PPPoE status in the menu bar, not that I've used that in years.