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| Xfce4 ModemLights Plugin |
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The xfce4-modem-lights applet is an xfce4 panel applet 
intended to simplify establishing a ppp connection via 
a modem. It is primarily designed to work with the debian 
ppp package and the pon/poff scripts provided by that 
package, but should be usable with any scripts that create
a lock file during dialing and retain it through the 
connection.

This plugin should work with any Xfce version from 4.2.0 onwards.

The applet requires 7 configuration options:

"Connection command:"
This is the command that initiates dialing, such as:
 /usr/bin/pon interbaun
Shortly after this command is executed, a lock file should 
be created indicating that the appropriate device is in 
use.

"Disconnection Command:"
This is the command that breaks the connection, such as:
 /usr/bin/poff

"Device:"
This is the device name (interface name) for the 
established connection, such as:
 ppp0
Note that this name may not be preceded or followed by 
superfluous white space.
To determine the device name, one can execute
 cat /proc/net/dev
before and after establishing the connection.
This will show the active devices/interfaces in the first 
column. The new device after establishing the connection 
is the device/interface name required.

"Lockfile:"
This is the name of the lock file created by the 
connection command, such as
 /var/lock/LCK..ttyS1
Again one can frequently find this name by checking the 
content of /var/lock before and after establishing the 
connection. The absence of that file indicates to the 
applet that no connection has been established and that 
no dialing is in progress.

"Icon (Disconnected)":
This is the path to the icon file that should be shown while no connection is active and no dialing is occurring.

"Icon (Connecting)":
This is the path to the icon file that should be shown while no connection is active but dialing is occurring.

"Icon (Connected)":
This is the path to the icon file that should be shown while a connection is active.
 
To see the troughput on the ppp connection I would suggest adding the xfce4-netload applet next to the modem-lights applet and configuring the former to use the same device as the latter.

