Grounding Network Switch

Hi All,

I live in Florida, and it’s been an extremely active storm season with lots of electrical storms near my house. I have had two close strikes about a week apart, and have lost a modem and a switch between the two, despite having a surge protector. I am wondering there’s anything I might be able to do to mitigate losses from strikes. I am looking at adding a UPS, and also running an earth ground to the network rack, but haven’t found anything by way of a “best practices”. Any help would be much appreciated.

In AZ here with monsoon & associated thunder storms; I unplug the dsl line from modem and don’t worry about ac mains power but do turn everything off. I saw a local news broadcast after one storm where a strike excavated the isp coax line and a 2" strip of asphalt that was above it all the way across the residential street.

Dead dinosaur ghosts released from burning fossils conjuring bad weather…

What surge protectors did your use that didn’t work?

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Everything was plugged into a Startech RKPW081915.

It is still reporting surge protection, though I’m not sure I trust it. I have been doing some digging, and there are some other potential culprits. There’s a powered coax splitting in my junction box that was NOT grounded as it should have been. I also have a few POE cameras that run through the attic. That cable is not shielded, but I didn’t think it needed to be as it’s all within the structure. Apparently “induced” strikes are a thing, which I plan to mitigate in the near a future with some ethernet grounding blocks such as these.

I’m also planning to add a UPS.

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Please keep us updated; I am interested in how you ground your rack.