I had a nearby lightning strike a few years ago. After it hit near an electrical pole 100 yards away from the house, I had things fail all over the house. Some things died immediately (3 Ethernet switches) but some failed weeks later (an enclosed LED fixture on the mud room ceiling and a controller board in one of my Liftmaster garage door openers). As best as I can tell when the surge damaged an Ethernet switch near the circuit breaker, it then ran along my GigE backbone taking out the other switches. The motherboard Ethernet port on a server failed a few days later, and then other things started acting flakey on that system, so I replaced that mobo.
Definitely proactively replace anything that is acting weird.
Total cost of the all replacements was almost exactly equal to my $1000 insurance deductible.
My BIL's house caught a surge from an exploded transformer. Electric company only paid them $1000 for everything taken out (this includes now problems with the electrical) So now insurance company going after them....(Note: This is in Philadelphia) We need tort reform. On top of all my UPS's (3 rack mounted APC 750's) I have whole house surge suppression. Though we rarely have electrical issues around my way...
Since I'm supplying all the labor, the total equipment replacements will come in around $500 --so far.
The strike must have been out in or near the front yard. I have a 250 ft winding drive with 6 light pedestals spaced about 50' apart. I noticed last night that all but one of them are now out, they were all using identical led filament lamps but the one that survived happened to be the one I just recently replaced. Go figure.
You can never figure what will fail when lighting strikes. Years ago lightning struck near my dad's house. He lost an incandescent bulb and the ON/OFF switch on his portable TV.
He also had lightning strike twice within 10' of each strike, years apart.
I once worked with a guy that survived being struck by lightning on two different occasions. He Is either the luckiest or unluckiest man alive depending on your point of view.
I wanted to get the network up and fairly stable before I started installing the lightning protection. I've just installed the gas tube surge protector where the ISP's incoming coax comes into the comm cabinet. So far, so good. No noticeable speed degradation, but I'm not the streamer in the family. We'll see what happens when she cranks up Netflix, along with her Ipad with Facetime, plus her phone --all at once, of course.
I would think closest to where the coax enters the house would be better. I'm thinking common mode voltage.
If you put the surge protector across the signal to shield of the coax. The surge protector works, however the lightning energy brings both the signal and shield of the coax to 5000 volts above "ground".
To wrap this up, I installed an ethernet surge protector as a secondary. It's installed between the network switch and the long cat5 leg going to the hub. Again, no noticeable degradation of service.
For me, the strike traveled along the Cat 5e and fried the ports on the switches and motherboard. UPS wasn't involved as it came in the other end. All the gear that died was on different UPSes, none-the-less.
I've never heard of this "Thunder Arrestor Protects Computer Networking Equipment Devices like Router,Modem,Camera,Switch etc." What does a Thunder Arrestor actually do?
