Lightning strikes twice.

Aug 02, 2008 22:09

A couple of weeks ago, we had a fun thunder storm (although not as good as the one on Monday). At pretty much the same time, our ( internet broke. )

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bateleur August 2 2008, 21:37:06 UTC
a power surge from a (distant) lightning strike managed to wreck the ethernet ports (or electronics feeding them) of both my printer and the router

Not impossible. Pooter equipment is quite sensitive to surges and power drops. The ideal way to protect it is to use some kind of UPS, but I've seen multi-way boards and the like which claim to have "surge protectors" built in. Don't know whether they really work...

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leathellin August 2 2008, 21:42:15 UTC
Or buy a surge protected power strip... (probably a bit cheaper :-)

Says the person in a country which still hasn't sorted out a stable electricity supply in it's capital city. Mutter.

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bateleur August 2 2008, 21:46:47 UTC
power strip

That being a synonym for multi-way board I suspect it's not much cheaper! ;-)

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leathellin August 2 2008, 21:48:33 UTC
multi-way board

A what with the what? Now I understand of course but we don't know such technical terms in this country... ;-)

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dr_bob August 3 2008, 19:07:12 UTC
Actually all our stuff is plugged into surge-protected four- (or six-)way adaptors, which is partly why I'm a little surprised. The fact that both router and printer ethernet ports (but not other features) have been trashed makes me wonder whether the surge came down the cable from the NTL box (no idea whether that's technically possible) and managed to fry our stuff without damaging the cable modem. There were ongoing NTL outages in Shepperton and Twickenham the next morning, so it seems feasible that the whole region got some sort of surge.

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bateleur August 3 2008, 19:49:10 UTC
I've never heard of that happening, but AFAIK it's not impossible.

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undyingking August 4 2008, 08:42:13 UTC
I'm no engineer, but naively I wouldn't think a fibre-optic cable would be able to carry a big chunk of electricity?

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