nload, a decent network bandwith monitor for the linux console (you can thus use it to quickly monitor the available bandwidth on your remote linux server):
www.roland-riegel.de – nload: monitor network traffic and bandwidth usage
# emerge nload (surprise, surprise ;)
usage (for example):
# nload -i 2000 -o 400
(where 2000 is the [i]ncoming/downstream and 400 the [o]utgoing/upstream bandwith of my server in kbit/s)
(note that it doesn’t brew coffee, though ;)
(kudos to Crypto from #gentoo for the hint)