[KLUG Members] Surge suppression for RJ45 connections?

[Bob Kanaley]

To the KLUG SysAdmin's,

Am I the only sysadmin that worries about surge suppression on my network
cabling?

I worry that a local lightning strike might surge in through the power lines
to some powered device attached to the network cabling (say, some network
attached, high amp Laser printer) or a device attached to a computer (a
reader, a scanner, etc.) and go out across the network back to one of my
servers; or a spike might come in on my dedicated dialup line; or the
satellite antenna might take a hit; or a local workstation might blow a
power supply and send out a surge over the network; or ...

It seems I have a heck of a time purchasing workstation UPS's that have
surge suppression for RJ45 connections. APC sells surge suppressors for use
on RJ45 cabling, but this is not included in any of their UPS's. I fell for
a third party salesman's word about some APC UPS's that had RJ45 jacks. Only
after I bought more than a half-dozen did I find out from APC that only two
of the wires have surge suppression on them! I had to look long and hard to
find a Belkin UPS that had surge suppression on all wires in the RJ45
connections. I bought a half-dozen of these, but Belkin has discontinued
this model!

What is the deal here? Is there no market out there for RJ45 protection?

Does putting an Ethernet signal through a surge suppressor cause general
network problems or am I the only true paranoid in the group?

Any recommendations for UPS's (or mental health professionals) would be
appreciated.


Bob

Robert V. Kanaley
Manager Information Systems
Agdia, Inc.
rvk@agdia.com
http://www.agdia.com