Surge Protecting My Ethernet Cable

[mowzeh]

So recently I had a surge from a nearby lightning strike that came through the copper line and up my ethernet cable and fried my motherboard. Being an old z97 chipset meant I had to throw out my i7 4790k and 16gb ddr3 ram, well not literally, I sold them on and upgraded. I got myself an Asus B350-F with a Ryzen 5 1600x and 16gb ddr4 memory. Great, but not quite, I already have an existing surge board but I want to protect my ethernet cable. In Australia options are limited but I've narrowed it down to the following two,

http://ijk.com.au/branch/ijk/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=159134

https://www.mwave.com.au/product/ubiquiti-networks-gigabit-ethernet-surge-protector-ethsp-ab84802

I know very little about surge protection. If someone could help me out with those two I would be very grateful. Thank you in advance.

 

[BFG-9000]

Long ago I wanted to put one of these between a cable modem and my router, because besides the power, the coax was the only wire from outside coming in and I didn't care about the cable modem because it was rented.

I tried both the standalone APC and Tripp-Lite models and they kept burning out after about a year, resulting in no connectivity.

So I instead switched to a coax protector to protect the cable modem instead and have never had a problem since, for 10 years. In all that time I have never lost an ethernet port so whatever the surges were, that were sufficient to kill the surge protectors, they weren't strong enough to damage anything else.

You may have use for a hair-trigger ethernet surge protector like this but don't be surprised if you have to replace it often. BTW that APC model you linked to only has 10/100 so only filters two pairs--the other two aren't connected so won't pass gigabit.

 

[mowzeh]

Long ago I wanted to put one of these between a cable modem and my router, because besides the power, the coax was the only wire from outside coming in and I didn't care about the cable modem because it was rented.

I tried both the standalone APC and Tripp-Lite models and they kept burning out after about a year, resulting in no connectivity.

So I instead switched to a coax protector to protect the cable modem instead and have never had a problem since, for 10 years. In all that time I have never lost an ethernet port so whatever the surges were, that were sufficient to kill the surge protectors, they weren't strong enough to damage anything else.

You may have use for a hair-trigger ethernet surge protector like this but don't be surprised if you have to replace it often. BTW that APC model you linked to only has 10/100 so only filters two pairs--the other two aren't connected so won't pass gigabit.

So you think it would be better and easier to just get the APC model I've linked and run my coax from the wall to the board, then to the modem? This should allow me to go past 100mbps correct?

 

[BFG-9000]

coax protectors do degrade the signal some. If you look in your modem's status page you will see the Upstream power level go up by about 2-3dBmV to compensate for the protector, which could be a problem if it's already marginal.

I actually put my standalone coax protector outside where it's closest to the grounding block you have to attach it to. When you consider how fast the rise time of a surge can be, putting it on a power strip with 40 feet+ of wiring to the ground in the fusebox strikes me as such a high impedance path to ground that it would be near useless. For the same reason the "whole house" type surge protectors that plug right into the fusebox probably protect best.

If you are paranoid (and I would be too if I had such new equipment and just got my old stuff cooked), then you could use an ethernet protector too. It is pretty cheap and you may not have the constant little surges I had, so better luck with them. That one though would limit things to 100Mb, which may not be a problem if your ISP speed is lower than that.