There are many environmental causes that require installing an inline surge protector; among them are lightning strikes, discharges from static build up, electromagnetic interferences, radio frequency interference, surges coming in through ground lines and even more dangerous, faulty wiring. Especially where your computer is concerned, these causes can send damaging electrical surges through your network lines where it will fry silicon components. It can be a costly repair, or replacement, if not protected properly with a surge protector. Having an inline surge protector installed will protect your computer’s data and prevent data line surges at the source: your data ports. Inline surge protectors safeguard all RJ45 and RJ11 connector plugs for modems, phones and answering machines and fax machines.
How an inline coaxial surge protector works is it uses a self-resetting switch to offset surges by diverting them to an earth ground line. Without this protection, you could lose your modem, motherboard, ports, network interface cards and all LAN gear associated with these connections.
Worse, these surges can cripple businesses relying on these connections to complete transactions. Even though data lines do not convey power, they are still prone to surges when a surge can’t find any other path. Most of the time this extra current is caused by high energy spikes from lightning, thunderstorm activity, heavy winds and other severe weather conditions. They have been known to wipe out entire grids before. From that, you can see why an inline coax surge protector is vital not only for a business, but for home protection as well.
Most people don’t even consider the chances of power surges entering their homes and destroying their equipment. It is only when it is too late that they begin to think about using surge protection on future appliances. The sad thing is today’s electronics are so far advanced that they are too delicate for normal household currents. Even sadder is surge protection is not built in, even though the knowledge of the threat is there.
Nevertheless, the threat remains and as technology advances more and more, the need for inline surge protection becomes more and more important to protect data lines. When a surge is created it seeks out any and all electrical paths. This includes data line paths like serial ports and other parallel ports. This threat is real and requires attention just like other “standard” power surge paths. Using an inline surge protector is how you defeat that threat.
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It is unclear which product/products connected together provide ALL of the following: Undercurrent Protection, Overcurrent Protection(surges, spikes), GFCI, data line(coaxial, phone line(RJ-11), and Ethernet(RJ-45)) AND lightning protection(direct or indirect).
Please provide supporting evidence for ANY product/combined product arrangement that supports these collective protections, in particular, lightning strikes(direct or indirect).
Hello Tobais
Lightning protection is an arbitrary subject in the surge protection industry as it is, like you said, unclear which products provide adequate protection. The fact is a single point-of-use surge protection device can protect connected equipment from an INDIRECT lightning strike given the distance of the impact point of the strike is far enough from the connected device. There is NO device that can protect equipment from a DIRECT strike from lightning.
An arc of lightning can carry up to 100k Amperes in a single microsecond. A direct hit is defined as impacting an overhead power line or transformer and will certainly overload and destroy any equipment, surge protection devices included. This goes for a strike as far away as several miles.
Most common forms of lightning strikes that affect homes are indirect, meaning the lightning strikes the ground and enters an underground cable connected to the home. The magnitude of the strike is diluted through ground contact and has a better chance of being stopped by surge protection equipment.
Several studies on indirect lightning strikes have concluded that peak current of an indirect blast surges not far beyond 80 Volts; this is still enough to melt semiconductors however, it is not out of range for adequate surge protection given proper grounding of the device. Grounding is the key to proper lightning protection. Many people miss this fact and then wonder why their device didn’t protect them.
Read more at http://www.telebyteusa.com/primer/ch6.htm for further facts.
Thanks for your question.