[geeks] Whee! Lightning strikes, AGAIN!

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 05:18:05PM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> None of the TVs were on surge supressors, and it seems I may need to  
> start my network rebuild TONIGHT. It appears that NICs around the house 
> have failed, I need to start with known good components, and completely 
> re-test every node on my network. Luckilly, I have two Gigabit switches 
> to replace the damaged units, but I don't have an infinite supply of 
> add-in NICs for all my machines.
>
> Is there a reasonable way to get 1 Gb connectivity that DOESN'T act like 
> a lightning rod? I.e., cheap fiber runs with media conversion on either 
> end?

It would be cheaper to reduce the nearby strikes to a minumum and make sure
you have no ground loops etc. There are commercial products to dissapate the
static charges that start lightening discharges. They look like the dust puppy
from User Friendly. 

Once I put a big one on top of my house (22 element 2m beam antenna), the nearby
strikes stopped. As soon as it was taken down before I moved, they came back. 

The antenna was horizontal elements around 19 inches long on the same mast
(6 foot) with 11 horizontal elements, all at DC ground. It just dissipated
any static charge around the house.

Gigabit ethernet is not, btw, it's 4 250mbit bi-directional pairs. So if you
put some sort of static/surge protection on it, you need to put 4, not 2.

Geoff. 


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM