Static electricity to the eyeball?

Well not much would shield from a full strike, but often you get stray edges/forks of a strike getting through wires into computers, so a spark gap takes that off. If you got the main strike of lightning into your computer, the whole thing would literally explode - just look at trees that were directly hit, they split in two, explosively.

Oh yes there is! (Well, it IS panto season!).

There is an earth rod in every cabinet - it's all run by electrickery, after all, so you wouldn't want it floating!

However, at the point of entry into the house, there is an isolator which passes the signal but prevents any nasties in the house from damaging the equipment in the street.

Here's a typical example:

I was specifically refering to a query about Virgin Media cable in the UK which is all underground. Only BT and the power companies are allowed overground distribution using poles. The isolation is on the input and the cable is earthed back at the street cabinet. The output side will be earthed to the mains by the Set Top Box or internet router.

The one I linked to has provision for fixing screws - many don't, as an internet search of your own will reveal. These will simply clip into custom designed plastic housings with security screws on the lid to prevent tampering.

The input cable will pass out of the back of the housing, through a hole in the outside wall. All that will be visible internally is the housing and the output socket

In article snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org>, Terry Casey snipped-for-privacy@example.invalid scribeth thus

How's that Terry seeing that most all of the net routers have a wall wart supply and the only set top box here has a figure of 8 cable and no earth?.

Tony, yes, you are right but when I used to come into contact with a lot of set top boxes, in particular, they were in metal housings with three core mains leads.

Now, of course, it is all wall warts and plastic!

However, the fact remains that the customer side of the isolator is never connected to earth, at least with Eastside Cable, Encom, Bell Cablemedia, Cable & Wireless Communications, ntl: and Virgin Media.

Of course, I have no knowledge of the many other companies which have existed over the years but given that the isolator is fitted immediately on entry to the building and there is no guarantee that an earth connection would be conveniently available, I think it highly unlikely.

The mind boggles. Is this a years old one again? Brian

It's not very old. According to al.howardknight.net it's dated 14 Dec 2018.

Before answering a 2 year old post from a broken website, please read and digest this:

On Sat, 12 Jun 2021 13:59:42 +0100, Fredxx posted for all of us to digest...

I will use this for my posts, thanks.