"Repair" function

[Jason Mellein <mellein MIT EDU>]

Hi,

Here @ mit we have wireless all over the place. Unfortunately when you 
move your laptop (without shutting down) from one region (eg: a 
building) to another (eg: another building), your adapter is under the 
impression nothing has changed because the SSID remains the same. I 
don't know the precise details of what changes but the connection no 
longer works (even though the signal strength is strong & the adapter 
thinks you're still good).

On the windows side, you just right click the connection & select 
"repair". The adapter gets disabled & re-enabled & the connection is 
reset. With NetworkManager there doesn't appear to be any such option. 
What I had to do to avoid shutting down was

/etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart

Unfortunately, since I run KDE, that dropped the icon from my system 
tray. So while I was able to reconnect it was inconvenient to do so and 
I lost my system tray icon.

SO. What I'm asking about is:

1) a "repair" function of sorts that is available by clicking on the 
system tray icon
2) making NM available to the system tray as an "applet" so it's 
possible to more reliably ( and transparently) add and remove it from 
the system tray in KDE.

Thanks!

Jason