Question Ethernet surge protection?

[ToastDisaster]

Don't really know where to put this but anyways as the title suggests, should I get surge protection for my ethernet? Forgot to unplug my router after a power outage, will this damage the router and my pc that is connected through ethernet?

 

[turtletarget111]

Many modern homes have surge protectors build into the WiFi cabinet as preventative measure. If you do not have a WiFi cabinet, it may be worth investing in a surge protector, especially if you have your own modem and router as opposed to one provided from your ISP. Brown outs and other power outages can damage your electronics. As the available voltage goes down, your electronics will begin to overheat as they draw more current. When the power is restored, the sudden spike in voltage could also damage your devices. I use the Belkin Power Strip Surge Protector and it has served me well. I have my PC, speakers, and monitor all plugged into it. It protects up to 4000 joules and has a reset switch. You can always get something smaller or more compact to better fit your needs. Hope this helped, take care.

 

[bill001g]

You should not put surge protection on ethernet cable themselves. In some ways this violates the ethernet standards. You might stop surges but you might now get crosstalk between the pairs if the surge protection is built cheaply.

Ethernet cables are magnetically and many times optically isolated from the power and other components in devices. This means that surges on the electrical power can never get directly to the ethernet cables. A power surge might damage the power supply or maybe some other component in say a router but it will not spread though the ethernet cable to another device.

You really should have any device that has a electrical plug go to a surge protector but you do not want to buy those units that you plug the actual ethernet cables into.

Now this is very different than a lightning strike. Nothing will stop that it appears and it will destroy equipment so badly that the lightning will cross over ethenet isolation and travel to other devices. I had surge protection on every device and also UPS on most devices. A lightning strike that hit very close to my house destroyed huge amounts of equipment and a lot of it made no sense. The UPS were fine and the surge protectors test as good but it got thing like security camera that are only connected via ethernet.

A simple power outage should be fine with normal surge protection. lightning you would have to unplug stuff to really protect against. Nobody is going to do that everytime a little rain starts, the time I got hit it was just windy and barely raining.