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OK, let me tell you my story. I was away from home on business for a few days. During that time there were severe thunderstorms. Every piece of electronics I own is plugged into high-rated surge protectors which apparently did their job. From what I was told, lightning struck the transformer located in my backyard and blew it up. (the lightning then traveled to my back cyclone fence and melted the privacy slats!) I found pieces of ceramic insulator in my yard and the power was out for about 12 hours. Luckily, there are only 3 houses on this transformer. ALL of the houses have cable internet/TV and ALL of them got their ethernet ports/cards fried even though the digital cable TV receivers and TV's are OK.
The high speed cable internet/broadband of course comes from the same pole. Apparently, some of the lightning current got into the coax cable, went straight through the cable modem, and fried my ethernet port on my motherboard even though the coax is grounded before it enters my house. The rest of the board is fine and so is the modem, cables and everything else. That of course is just speculation, but that's my theory as to what happened.
My provider of course refused to take any responsibility for the damage but did come out and install a PCI ethernet card free of charge to get me back online. Fine with me. I accept the outcome.
I was under the impression that my surge protectors, and the grounded coax would protect my equipment but I was wrong.
My question is, is there something else I can do to prevent harmful current from ever entering that way again? Is there something I can put between the modem and the computer to stop harmful current?
The high speed cable internet/broadband of course comes from the same pole. Apparently, some of the lightning current got into the coax cable, went straight through the cable modem, and fried my ethernet port on my motherboard even though the coax is grounded before it enters my house. The rest of the board is fine and so is the modem, cables and everything else. That of course is just speculation, but that's my theory as to what happened.
My provider of course refused to take any responsibility for the damage but did come out and install a PCI ethernet card free of charge to get me back online. Fine with me. I accept the outcome.
I was under the impression that my surge protectors, and the grounded coax would protect my equipment but I was wrong.
My question is, is there something else I can do to prevent harmful current from ever entering that way again? Is there something I can put between the modem and the computer to stop harmful current?
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