[KLUG Members] Surge suppression for RJ45 connections?

[Adam Williams]

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

No, I not only worry about it, I've *TWICE* been the victim of direct 
lightning strikes - and both IN THE SAME PLACE.  So, so much for the old 
adage about lightning strikes.

>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 ...

I'm sorry to tell you that the reality (as usual) is even worse than you 
suspect.  The EMP of a lightning stike will induce high voltage right into 
the network cables themselves,  buried safely in the dark void between the 
walls, and march down to every device it can reach.

It'll blow up those nice ICs on the PC's LAN card, and very possibly 
travel right out the power supply ground without causing any problem 
there.

>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

Yep.

>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?

Way too expensive, the price to protect enough devices to be worth doing 
it at all is truly prohibitive.

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

I suppose it depends upon the surge suppressor.

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

APC sells stand alone ethernet line filters,  but them on the REALLY 
important boxes - then get an insurance policy on the PCs, it is cheaper 
than protecting them - and you get new ones when they get blowed up.

We had a lightning expert come it and look at the building we have that 
gets repeatively whammed.  What they do is install a steel grid around the 
building and multiple lighting rods - lightning just wants to get down to 
the earth anyway - so give it a REAL easy way and it will leave everything 
else alone.  That plus not blashpeming so much.