As a new user of KDE + Plasma I've installed/uninstalled loads of stuff, during this period my internet (wireless) connection has slowed down considerably.

Is something keeping my connection busy?

Any help would be much appreciated since I do not want to have to rebuild the system.

One clue is I can't install upgrades. First I get "not all packages can be installed etc" then "Another application seems to be using the package system at this time. You must close all other package managers before you will be able to install or remove any packages"

What other packages could be running?

Bill Lancaster
Kbuntu 12.04, KDE 4.8.1

internet activity - there's a plasmoid called Socket Sentry that will tell you your real time internet activity http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/?content=122350 - you may need to compile it. you can also use EtherApe http://etherape.sourceforge.net should be in repo

package management - there's reports of this (or similar) with Muon, which is the package manager I assume you are using https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=297681 viewtopic.php?f=9&t=97776