[gnome-love] Comments requested on Idea for a new Gnome App.

[Tarun Ramakrishna Elankath <tarun webkadai com>]

Hi all,

I am a linux developer newbie and thought the best way to acquire skills
in Gnome programming would be to develop a small, useful Gnome utility.

I want to develop an application that sits in the panel notification
area and shows the flow of traffic over a selected network interface. I
have in mind the features of the Windows "Show connection in System
Tray" utility. There would be 2 computer icons (local and remote), which
flash as data is sent over the interface.

I am not aware of any such existing application in Gnome. Please correct
me if I am wrong. If there already a similar application present, I
would love to contribute to its development.

I am confused about the ways in which I should measure traffic over the
interface. I can think of:
1) Regularly polling /proc/net/dev in a separate thread and keep
updating the panel lights.
2) Register my app as a netfilter user-space extension. Use libipq and
its predefined handlers to update the panel lights.

1) has the advantage of being easy to code, but is limited in extent.
2) has loads of power, but would require quite a bit of learning on my
part. Besides I believe this option would require superuser privileges.

All comments, tips pointers will be appreciated,

Thank you,
Tarun