Thunder

There still should not be a path to your equipment but most surges are really induced transients anyway so that is not an issue.

If you start with a good grounding system and ground all of your surge protection (on every wire that comes into the house) to a single point in that grounding system, you eliminate virtually all of the surges. Some point of use protection that combines protection of all conductors at the equipment will do the rest. It gets more complicated if you are dealing with a big campus and a number of interconnected buildings but the concepts are the same.

I've probably lost at least 10 modems over the years from lightning. Some were even killed when my computer and modem turned off. I began unplugging the phone line at all times when the modem is not in use, and shutting off the computer whenever I hear thunder coming close. Three years ago, I lost one, just because I was loading the weather reports when I should have shut off the system sooner.

I'm in the country, and at the end of the power and phone lines. I have everything well grounded. I only have dialup via buried copper wire. I now know that there is no solution except unplugging the phone line. Those modems just cant handle the surges. I have never had a phone or answering machine ruined.

My biggest problem is remembering to unplug it. Sometimes I forget and am not home when a storm hits.... However I have been pretty good at unplugging it these days, automatically whenever I shut off the computer.

In my opinion, those surge protectors are worthless for lightning.

Might be why you lost "10 modems", Home Gay. You learn slow.

In today's post modem society, replacements must be inexpensive. I have at least one modem on the shelf I can't stand to throw away. Though I doubt i'll need it again.

Surge protectors are not very usefull for a direct lightning strike, but they will protect quite effectively against induced surges from near misses (or even long distance misses) which used to kill modems regularly. Later modems were a LOT more resistant to those induced spikes.

Unrelated technology changes or spike specific design improvement?

Thunder has nothing to do killing modem. Lightning is. Analog vs. digital? Post modem? What does that mean? Talking about early acoustic modem at like 300 baud? If you get direct hit, pretty well every thing is toast.

I would say a combination. The design of modems using large scale Integrated circuits instead of discrete circuitry likely helped., but they added much better surge protection on the boards as well.

"software modems" which offloaded a lot of processing from the modem to the computer may have also helped.

I wonder if there is some sort of auto disconnect that would unhook the phone line. Could it tied into a light switch, for example? There must be something available with all these wireless gizmos nowadays.

When lightning travels over 1000 feet in the air, a simple short throw switch is not going to do much.

Just turning off a device is almost no protection. It must be unpluged and the plug moved away from the source.

No, it really only needs to be farther than the next lower impedance path. Like the issue of being chased by a bear in the woods: you don't need to be able to outrun the BEAR, you just need to be able to outrun at least ONE of your COMPANIONS! ;-)

Best defense is to unplug. If you can't do that, next best is a combined surge protection device that combines the phone line and power line so that they share the same protection ground as the PC. This minimizes the transient difference between the power line and thehone line. M

Best defense is to unplug. If you can't do that, next best is a combined surge protection device that combines the phone line and power line so that they share the same protection ground as the PC. This minimizes the transient difference between the power line and thehone line. M

Direct lightning strikes are actually pretty rare, even here in Florida where we have thunderstorms all the time. We had one today. Good surge protection DOES work but it is not just plugging in a protector and calling it a day. You need to have layers of protection connected to a good grounding system. I have a weather station, connected to a PC and the sensors are on a pole with a lightning rod on top. It has been hit twice that I know of for sure. The first time I lost a serial port. After working on the protection more, the second hit just caused a reboot on the PC and all was OK. I have a dish, TV antenna, 5 TVs, 8 PCs and nothing ever gets unplugged. It is all about protection.

There are surge protectors that include phone line protection.

I'm on cable but have UPS and surge protector on computer and a few years ago surge from high tension line falling on low tension line blew out all my home surge protectors but only loss of equipment was a microwave oven not on one.

Oren posted for all of us...

He needs a different kind of "protection" or maybe we do-from him.