Ok, its no surprise, I live in the south. I’ve lived in Florida and now in Georgia and the past two Summers have presented some headaches from lightning. Last year I lost quite a few electroics from an electrical surge that came over the phone line. Unfortunately, not everything can be ‘useful’ if I place a surge suppressor on the phone line as digital transmissions can be compromised–most consumer surge-suppressors are expecting analog transmissions (i.e. voice) only.
This Summer seems to be repeating itself and I am again winding up with damaged electronics. Last year I had to go with an unprotected phone line for ADSL, but this year I changed over to cablemodem service to protect the phone line and the items (TiVo) on it. Now I have a near similar problem with surges coming across the coax. And while the consumer-marketed surge-suppressors include coax pass-throughs, these typically are for analog transmissions and not the digital transmissions of a cablemodem (ahem, broadband).
So, like last year my computers, my X-Box, etc. are all at the mercy of mother nature and her bitchy attitude adjustments she bestowes on me. The bemusing thing is that I never take a direct strike from lightning, but rather one of my neighbors, and those near-neighbors (me included here) become fallout casualties.
I would just get a rider policy through my insurance carrier, but damn Allstate keeps suggesting that if I use the insurance I pay for they’ll make me pay a lot more for it. Go figure. So, what is all of this leading up to in this post?
Why are homes (and neighborhoods) designed for better resistence to electrical surges related from lightning? I called my electrical company and their whole-house surge-suppressor ($6.95+tax per month) only covers motor-driven devices, which happen to be the most resilient against surges.
I’m thinking of moving back to the lightning capital of the world (Florida) as I never had any lightning problems there. lol
Replies
When it comes to cable surge suppressors, there's zero difference between "analog" and "broadband". The digital signal just occupies a channel (actually several) on the cable, and a surge suppressor can't tell the difference.
The only real difference is that a digital modem feeds a signal backwards up the cable on one channel, but that's really only a problem if you put an amplifier or splitter between modem and cable.
Beyond using a simple surge suppressor, with a cable modem you should regard the modem as expendable and then put a good-quality cat5 suppressor on its output connection to your hub/router.
They make surge suppressors for catv, phone and Cat 5 lines
http://www.apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=12
I'll add that for Cat5 the problem is that there is no ground reference in the cable, and so most Cat5 switches, etc, are not grounded. This means that a "common mode" surge can walk right through a hub and damage your computer port (since the computer is usually well-grounded). If you don't mind the performance hit, an old 10Base2/T combo hub is an ideal "suppressor" since it can be easily grounded.Or just go wireless.