the gnome-system-monitor applet showing the network load (of eth0) is too smart
for its own good. it seems to dynamically calculate the maximum load on the
device. as my eth0 is used for LAN *and* internet access, it means if i ever
copy over a file on the LAN (with a speed of about 2MB/sec), no internet traffic
after that will be seen in the monitor (the 100K/s being dwarfed by the LAN speed).

there should be an option to set the 100% mark of network devices, so that i
could, say, set it to 100K/s. any LAN traffic would just show up as 100%, but
the internet traffic could be monitored.