I’ve started to experience some serious problems with my internet connection today. The wireless starts fine and then drops, either giving me no connection or restoring the connection. For example, it’s just given me the little “gears” as it searches (the laptop hasn’t moved) and it’s got an excellent signal (the laptop being right next to the wireless router).
This has just happened today - I’ve had no issues at all for weeks with the settings and I haven’t been making any changes. Also, I have a Windows 7 laptop right next to the openSUSE one and it doesn’t have any issues (appart from being W7!).
Out of interest what wireless card are you using ?
What encryption ?
Issue an iwconfig from command prompt as root and post the findings here.
Looking of course for errors counts in the figures, excessive noise, poor link quality etc.
Strangely I had a similar problem a few months ago, it was not openSUSE related, but laptop and other equipment related. This was very strange, my digital cordless panasonic phone power transformer was interfering with the wireless signal! It only affected my Dell laptop though, my HP laptop and a belkin wirless adapter were ok.
All down to the signal frequency. I changed the power transformer and had no issue since!