FTTC During Thunderstorms

bulldog147 · 21 Jun 2019 at 22:23

I just saw the forecasters was all over twitter, facebook, press, itv news, sky news and bbc news of a possible severe thunderstorms in all over UK start from this Sunday onwards lasted until next Thursday because of very high heat, humidity and cape index leads to severe storms.

I know during thunderstorms that all FTTC modem / router should be turned off and pulled out dsl cable from the telephone socket. I saw press newspaper a long while back where a lightning bolt damaged bt socket.

I expecting ISP's will be huge pressure to deal with FTTC customers will complaints of DLM during bad storms next week.

Probably advised best to leave modem off overnight when go to bed and pulled out cable of dsl socket during overnight storms as possible.

Sparx · 21 Jun 2019 at 22:30

It's all scare-mongering, nothing to worry about. The UK's broadband network is much more resilient than you think.

Stephanie Peterson · 21 Jun 2019 at 22:57

bulldog147 said:
I know during thunderstorms that all FTTC modem / router should be turned off and pulled out dsl cable from the telephone socket. I saw press newspaper a long while back where a lightning bolt damaged bt socket.

Er no they dont, its extremely unlikely your line will be hit, heck it might even be ran completely underground. Now if its a biblical fork lightning super storm maybe lol.
Ignore the crap in the press, 99% of it is uniformed bull.

Caged · 22 Jun 2019 at 01:25

A house about 50m down the road from a place I used to live in got hit a few years ago and blew a hole in the roof, the proximity of the strike was enough to burn the PCB tracks off our VDSL filtered faceplate, destroy the Openreach modem, kill an Apple AirPort, an HP network switch and the NIC on the Microserver the switch was connected to. This was on underground cabling.

So it can happen. I put a grounded surge protector on the link between my modem/router and the rest of the network now.

Rroff · 22 Jun 2019 at 02:05

Caged said:
A house about 50m down the road from a place I used to live in got hit a few years ago and blew a hole in the roof, the proximity of the strike was enough to burn the PCB tracks off our VDSL filtered faceplate, destroy the Openreach modem, kill an Apple AirPort, an HP network switch and the NIC on the Microserver the switch was connected to. This was on underground cabling.

So it can happen. I put a grounded surge protector on the link between my modem/router and the rest of the network now.

Yeah it can happen though the chances are reasonably low - a surge protector will only handle so much though - a fairly local hit it will probably struggle with. A colleague had 3x TVs taken out despite hanging off a UPS (which was also protecting their phone line) when lightening hit the end of their garden oddly enough everything else survived fine - so possibly the UPS actually stopped the strike, which came in on the phone line, going back to the rest of their house electronics despite killing everything connected to it.

(Also annoying as I recommended the UPS as they were fretting after buying a couple of expensive TVs).

JasonM · 22 Jun 2019 at 03:52

Rroff said:
A colleague had 3x TVs taken out despite hanging off a UPS

The average lighting bolt is 5 miles long and can reach 200 million volts, none of the consumer mains filters can deal with this.

Rroff · 22 Jun 2019 at 03:55

JasonM said:
The average lighting bolt is 5 miles long and can reach 200 million volts, none of the consumer mains filters can deal with this.

This is one of the reasons I keep offline backup copies of my more important files :s

bledd · 22 Jun 2019 at 20:42

Sparx said:
It's all scare-mongering, nothing to worry about. The UK's broadband network is much more resilient than you think.

No it's not..

My mum's router was trashed , opened it up and you could see a burn down the PCB. It went from the router to her onboard NIC. The realtek crab chip had a claw missing and burn marks on the motherboard.

Stephanie Peterson · 22 Jun 2019 at 20:48

In the 25years i have been in IT i have come across just one properly blown to bits computer from lightning. Was similar to how described above, house too a direct hit and nothing would survive that even with a filter.
Seen a couple of other damaged modems in the day, but that was it so its quite uncommon hence i dont bother with unplugging stuff.

Now if you are really out in the sticks with long overhead runs to your house then ..well maybe but i dont think its worthwhile.

GeordieStew · 22 Jun 2019 at 20:52

I recommend removing your tin foil hat during a thunderstorm! Just in case. As I heard a bloke down the pub talking about his Uncle's friend who may have been struck by lightning.

Rroff · 22 Jun 2019 at 20:52

Stephanie Peterson said:
Now if you are really out in the sticks with long overhead runs to your house then ..well maybe but i dont think its worthwhile.

Sadly the situation where I am now

:

So I probably should get into the habit of unplugging anything expensive in a thunderstorm - where I moved from was properly underground supply wise.

bledd · 24 Jun 2019 at 22:58

bledd said:
No it's not..

My mum's router was trashed , opened it up and you could see a burn down the PCB. It went from the router to her onboard NIC. The realtek crab chip had a claw missing and burn marks on the motherboard.

Been hunting around for the photo I took, finally found it

Randomface74 · 24 Jun 2019 at 23:00

surge protector?

bledd · 24 Jun 2019 at 23:18

Won't help with lightning.

If you're in the countryside with all overhead lines, safest to remove dsl connection