# The &kbandwidth; Handbook

&Hans.Dembinski; &Hans.Dembinski.mail;
2007
Hans Dembinski
&FDLNotice;
2007-09-25
1.00.00

&kbandwidth; is a small applet, which shows your current network load.

KDE
KBandWidth
kicker
kbandwidth
applet

## Introduction

&kbandwidth; is a small applet, that resides in your taskbar. At any time, it shows your current network load. Please report any problems or feature requests to &Hans.Dembinski.mail;.

## Using &kbandwidth;

&kbandwidth; was written to work right out of the box. You shouldn't need to set up anything besides starting the applet via "Add Applet to Panel..." from the &kicker; menu. In the very beginning, &kbandwidth; will show wrong network load percentages, but it will soon adapt to show the correct values.

You can accelerate the adaption by producing a maximum up- and download load for your connection (for example download or upload a big file from or to a fast server).

If you want to modify the look-and-feel of &kbandwidth;, you can do so by selecting "Preferences" in the context menu of &kbandwidth;. You will get a dialog with three tabs.

Screenshot of first preferences tab In the first tab, you can manually select, which network interface &kbandwidth; should monitor for load. You can choose the speed unit, which the network speed should be displayed. You can decide, whether the network load should also be displayed as a text together with the percentage bars and whether arrows should be displayed, which blink also at very small amounts of network traffic. Furthermore, you can modify, how fast &kbandwidth; should update itself to reflect changes.

Screenshot of the second preferences tab In the second tab, you can modify the colors of the percentage bars, arrows and text. Further, you can change the opacity of the arrows, when they signal no network activity.

Screenshot of the third preferences tab In the third tab, you can either manually set the maximum speeds individually for each of your network devices, or you can toggle the button for automatic learning of these values. This is the default.

If you exchanged a network device and your previously correct maximum speeds are now to high, you can also click a button to reset the learning process. If you think, that &kbandwidth; has correctly determined your maximum speeds, you can safely toggle off the learning button and save (a negligible amount of) CPU cycles.

### &kbandwidth; features

Shows in- and outgoing network traffic as a percentage bar and/or in text form.

Configuration free.

Automatic learning of maximum network speeds.

Automatic switching of active network device.

## Credits and License

&kbandwidth;

Program copyright 2007 &Hans.Dembinski; &Hans.Dembinski.mail;

Original idea and code by:

&Niko.Sommer;

Documentation Copyright © 2007 &Hans.Dembinski; &Hans.Dembinski.mail;

&underFDL;

&underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &kbandwidth;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Requirements

In order to successfully use &kbandwidth;, you need &kde; 3.5. Hardware requirements for &kbandwidth; are negligible.

&kbandwidth; can be downloaded via Subversion from .

### Compilation and Installation

&install.compile.documentation;

&documentation.index;