In his Popular Network Preferences applications and comments blog post, GSoC student Andre Alves Garzia gives a great comparative overview of network preferences apps in OS X, Ubuntu, Windows and ZETA, as a means to look for the ideal approach for Haiku.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/koki/2007-05-08_settings_beos_style/