I finally got fed up with my BT Voyager adsl usb modem and have just got hold of a router - Netgear DG632.
It says it can be used with ethernet or usb. Since I don't know anything about ethernet whatsoever and my computer doesn't have anything relating to ethernet in it I've been trying it with usb.
I followed the instructions and entered the router ip address in firefox and got to the set up screens and let it set everything up.
All I needed to do was enter my isp username and password and everything worked fine and I was able to browse the net.
This was with an ubuntu Dapper live cd.
When trying it with any of my installed linux's I can't get anywhere with it. Typing the router address in firefox just gives me a cannot connect message as does typing anything else.
On dapper the router is listed as eth0
I haven't the first idea where to go from here as it's dealing with things I've had no experience of.
I'd particularly like to get it working with suse so if anyone can guide my with that I'd be most grateful.
In suse I've tried setting it up as a network device in both using static ip pointing to the modem and using dhcp (which is how it seems to be working with dapper cd).
When restarting networking there are errors starting dhcpd which I'll post later if needed as I'm not able to at moment.
I did remove a lot of networking and dhcp related stuff after installing all my distros as I didn't need them so I assume that's the main cause of my troubles. What apps do I need installed to set up dhcp correctly?

If you enable "DHCP" on the router then it will automatically issue network settings to any computer on the network that requests them - this is probably why the Live CD worked, as it automatically uses DHCP. All Linux distributions actually use DHCP by default, so if you connect the computer to the router and then accept the defaults for networking during the installation process it should just work automatically.

SUSE is rather bad about installing unnecessary software, but the extra stuff just takes up space. The only security risk is the SSH remote access service, and even if you don't disable that the router's own firewall should block connections from outside.

EDIT: Note that you could put back the packages that you removed and configure networking again with YaST, but if you are new to Linux you may find it quicker to start with with a fresh installation.

Yah, I'm fairly confident it would work with a fresh install.
Problem is I'm waiting for a new computer to be delivered, on which I will do fresh installs of everything. It's supposedly due in 4 days but it has already been delayed several times.
I don't really want to do a fresh install for what might be a few days and my old BT Voyager can now only cope with a couple of minutes net acess before freezing up (well, I thought throwing it at the wall might help but it didn't).
I can't actually remember what stuff I removed since it was within the first day of installing.
I don't know what else I can do though.

If you aren't sure what packages to reinstall you really need either someone to look at it themselves, or a bit of interactive help. If you have alternate Internet access at that location try asking on the SUSE IRC channels or qunu.com for someone to walk you through it.

Ordinarily I'd point out that the remote desktop sharing facility lets you give other people temporary access to help you out, but in this case that's not going to work...

Well I still wasn't getting anywhere then decided to try other live cds.
After trying 6 different ones it turns out none of them are working, only ubuntu dapper.
After going through the manual again I noticed it says the usb won't work with linux (even thought it does with ubuntu).
So I went and bought an ethernet card, plugged in the router and booted up suse.
Everything connected with no configuration needed.
Unfortunately, that isn't the end of my problems.
I'm on an 8 meg connection but the highest speed I've got with the router is 110kb/s and it is generally running between 11 and 70kb/s.
I tried the old eciadsl based bt voyager again and that is running at 400 to 500kb/s (I'm not sure what speed I'm capapble of since the bt voyager crashes after a few minutes or if it goes above 500kb/s, whichever happens first).
Am I missing anything else?
The router documentation says it is capapble of up to 8MBps and upgradable to 24MBps