open command prompt on windows machine and run below command and paste output here.

i.e
Regards,

First off does your modem have a gui (a ip that allows you to log into your modem like 192.168.1.1. If so its on your modem or should be). If it does not then you also have an internet light on your modem. Is it on when you have the linux machine plugged in. How do you connect with windows. Just plug in an go or do you have to go to start>connect to> your connection here?

Its possible you do have a PPPoE connection which requires a login and password to connect to the internet. What would really help look on your modem and tell us what make and model it is.

Ok.

Taking a cue from your advice to try a live distro, im now running Slax. At the network interfaces-info center it says the following:

Name: Io
Ip Add: 127.0.0.1
Netwrk Mask: 255.0.0.0.
Type: Loopback Up

No internets for me.

Ok.

The modem is a Motorola Surfboard.

The modem does not have a gui. It does, however, have shiny lights that go blink/blink ;)

Whether the modem is plugged into my laptop (with Suse) or my win mac, the lights do their thing (no change).

When I plug it into my win mac, its plug 'n go.

Really appreciating all the feedback,

there might be your ethernet card not detected or driver not supported
second thing is your network card not configured

give some H/W detail here

below command display ethernet card

run below command to view network module loaded or not?

Note: If you are login non root user run sudo before each command

Regards,

Ok.

ipconfig /all:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce Netw
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-04-61-93-87-F0
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 83.81.49.69
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.248.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 83.81.48.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 212.54.40.146
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 212.54.40.25
212.54.35.25

cheers,

OK it seems you get ip address from your ISP through DHCP.

see this line in your output.

now paste some details which i said in above post.

Regards,

Ok.

lspci | grep -i ethernet:
02:00.0 Ethernet Controller: Realtek Semiconduction Co., Ltd.: Unknown device 8168 (rev 01)

lsmod returns a host of data, in which I know not what to look for.

cheers,

hmmm your ethernet card model is r8168.
I assume (not confirm) you need to install driver.( previously i had face problem with this model in centos)

for confirmation can you paste all output of lsmod command.

Regards,

Well,

I'm unable to paste the lsmod data. Figured i'd save it to usb device then connect to win mac, but open office is giving me the "saving using protocol "media" is not supported" error.

Sigh.

Seems I can't even save to the harddisk on the laptop right now.

What did I get myself into!? ;)

Hi,

as sem007 was alluding to, the driver (kernel module) that you need seems to be r8168.

To see if your kernel has that module please run the following command:

If it returns nothing then you don't have it.

If it returns something like
then we are getting somewhere.

Next see if that module has been loaded
If this returns nothing, then the module is not loaded. So, you should load it. As root:
Please try the above and let us know what happens.

Evo2.

Ok.

find /lib/modules -name r8168.ko, no output; returns me to command line prompt.

cheers,

hey hi that means you dont have to do anything to get connected... good.. that means you get ip dynamically and in suse you are facing problem in configuring Ethernet

use yast or yast2 to configure ethernet card and slect Automatically connect via DHCP

also use yast or yast2 to disable firewall

if you follow these two steps you will get connected

also let us know the output of

Well,

(Re)configuring the ethernet card with setup via dhcp and no firewall does not work for me.

Iptable -L is returning lots of data, that I cant paste for reason stated earlier.

Cheers,

Ok, that's not so good. I just checked and it seems suse 10 is from circa 2005 which may be before this driver even existed. Can you please let us know what your kernel version is? You can find out with the following command:
Evo2.

PS. Suse experts: please correct me if I'm wrong about the age of suse 10.

PPS. OP: how old/new is your hardware?