Question Both Spectrum modem and my own personal wifi router don't power on after bad thunderstorms pass through my area(2nd time this happened)

[Vahelius]

The title sums it up. I live in an area that gets frequent and bad thunderstorms often during the summer. Yesterday we had some terrible storms pass through and when I got home from work that day both my Spectrum modem and my Netgear wifi router would not power on. I tested them both on multiple outlets and tested them with compatible ac adapters that I knew were working and they wouldn't power on at all. This is the second time this has happened in the 2.5 years I've lived in this apartment. Replacing both devices fixes the issue entirely. After the last time this happened, I installed this coaxial surge protector, but it still happened again. I installed it right onto the port on the back of the modem and then screwed in the coaxial cable from the wall. I think the surge or whatever caused the devices to fail came through the coaxial cable and then the ethernet cable from the modem to the wifi router. Both devices were plugged into very good surge protectors and all the other electronics plugged into those surge protectors work just fine.

I would prefer not to drop $100 on a wifi router every couple of years or so. Is there a better way to protect at least the router? I don't care about the modem as Spectrum will replace them no questions asked. Did I install the coaxial surge protector incorrectly? Should I use an ethernet surge protector?

I was looking into ethernet surge protectors and found this video. The only model that passes their tests is this ethernet surge protector made by D-Link. Is that a good idea to use? What about this in-line ethernet surge protector? If I use the surge protector from D-Link then how am I supposed to run the ground wire? I live in a small apartment and have no way to run the cable out to a grounding post outside, not that I know where they have one.

Would these methods even work? If so, are they a one-off device that needs to be replaced after a surge? If that's the case then using the D-Link surge protector wouldn't make any sense as replacing it would cost about $10 more than just replacing the wifi router.

Should I install the in-line surge protectors at the jacks in the back of my expensive computers? The surge stopped at the wifi router and the expensive computers weren't affected, but I do want to make sure they are safe on top of protecting my wifi router.

Thanks for your help.

 

[bill001g]

Coax cable generally are the most resistant to any surges. By code in most areas the outer shield is connected to a ground connection as it enters the building. This mostly is to prevent lighting from traveling into the building and starting a fire.

Ethernet cables by the way they are designed are magnetically isolated from device they connect to. Many also have optical isolaters in addition. This is mostly to prevent ground loop conditions between equipment and to reduce interference between the devices. Not sure adding any so called "surge" protection would do much, many times it will cause performance issues.

The best bet is surge protection on the power but as you have found it doesn't always work.

I have surge protection on my power as well as multiple UPS. I had lightning strike very close but not the house and all the power/phone/coax etc is underground. I had massive damage but the UPS and surge protectors all tested fine. I am almost sure it came in via the power because I had equipment damaged on my security camera network that has no outside connection.

So somehow it passed through a surge protector and more surge protection on the UPS. It was not just 1 set of devices I have multiple UPS and pretty much all the power strips I use have surge protection.

From what I can tell it somehow got into something like a switch and was so strong that it burned out the isolation in the ethernet ports and traveled to other device. But that does not explain how I lost ports like a HDMI video port on a computer where the monitor it fine.

From what I can tell this type of equipment only really protect against power surges coming from the electrical company not so much a lightning strike. The only way that seems real safe thing is to unplug everything. It was not even raining much on the one that got me.

In addition I found out how worthless the equipment warranties are on UPS. First they want you to claim it against your home insurance which is nowhere close to my 1% deductable but just filing the claim will increase my rates for 3 years. Then they want you to send the equipment in at your expense along with receipts and even after all that they will only pay you "used" value for the equipment. In the end it was cheaper to just pay the $700 or so it cost to replace stuff than to try to deal with insurance.