Question Possible a lightning strike killed only ethernet ports on router?

[Saphyen]

Hello, just the other day I had a horrible lightning storm with really bad take out electric grid type of lightning. Ever since then my router has been acting bad, the wireless works fine, but the Ethernet portion just kinda died. First of all I can barely manage to connect it after unplugging and replugging into the router to get speeds up to 9mbps if even that. It usually stays around 3mbps when it should be well over 300mbps. I have tried different Ethernet cables, updated my drivers, and updated the router firmware (struggled with that abnormally). I was just curious if it's possible to pretty much kill only the ethernet ports, but not exactly all the way or am I focusing on the wrong thing?

 

[USAFRet]

I was just curious if it's possible to pretty much kill only the ethernet ports, but not exactly all the way or am I focusing on the wrong thing?

That is absolutely possible.

I had similar a few years ago.

Very specific ports and devices were killed or otherwise affected.

 

[RealBeast]

Hello, just the other day I had a horrible lightning storm with really bad take out electric grid type of lightning. Ever since then my router has been acting bad, the wireless works fine, but the Ethernet portion just kinda died. First of all I can barely manage to connect it after unplugging and replugging into the router to get speeds up to 9mbps if even that. It usually stays around 3mbps when it should be well over 300mbps. I have tried different Ethernet cables, updated my drivers, and updated the router firmware (struggled with that abnormally). I was just curious if it's possible to pretty much kill only the ethernet ports, but not exactly all the way or am I focusing on the wrong thing?

I live in rural East Texas on a large property with cable modem. We get frequent lightening strikes over a large area where the cable is buried and the result is damage to a number of network devices from the modem, router, to switches and distant network adapters. They are the most frequently damaged components in my experience. After about 10 years of losing a variety of components, I ended up routing my incoming cable through a UPS that seems to reduce the impact of strikes, it's been several years since I've had to replace anything.

 

[Pimpom]

A bit late but let me add my 2c: I can testify that lightning can damage only the ethernet section of a system. Here's one of my experiences:

Around 20 years ago, someone's quite-new system died after lightning struck a neighborhood gaming network. I replaced the motherboard after confirming that it was the part that had died.

A couple of years later, I had an inspiration and checked the motherboard more closely. Sure enough, the Realtek LAN chip had blown apart. Moreover, it shorted the 5V rail to ground. I desoldered the supply pins and the short went away.

I put in a CPU (an Athlon XP) and voila! it booted up without a problem. I installed a 10/100 Mbps LAN card and that worked too. I added more parts and used it as a second computer and later sold the whole thing after explaining the mobo's history to the buyer.