Power Surge Through Ethernet Cable

Yep happens all the time.

Power surge through ethernet cable.

Power over ethernet or poe describes any of several standards or ad hoc systems that pass electric power along with data on twisted pair ethernet cabling. One device connects to an electrical outlet and tethers to a modem or router s lan port using an ethernet cable. A power surge can go through any wire. So the surge must have come in via the coax line went through the cable modem and into the airport extreme out the ethernet line through the thunderbolt to ethernet adapter and into the lacie d2.

Ethernet surge protector is a surge protection device spd that is inserted inline on an rj45 cat6 cat5 cat5e cable to prevent damage of electronic networking equipment. This allows a single cable to provide both data connection and electric power to devices such as wireless access points waps internet protocol ip cameras and voice over internet protocol voip phones. The second unit plugs into another electrical outlet near the device you want. So if your routers and switched are connected to surge protectors ethernet by it self is a long shot.

Last summer i had a lightning strike on the tv cable stanchion in my back yard. Interestingly enough the cable modem wasn t damaged but everything else was. The fact of the matter is that a power surge can end up damaging your hdmi cable to the point that it features compression artifacting skipping lowered resolution or outright lack of a signal because this surge or spike on the electrical current flowing through your devices is common in home theater equipment. It will weld it together so fast.

The ethernet ports protect from out of norm surges from the outlet grid. There is just not a lot of electricity going through. The chances of a surge through an ethernet cable that will damage the modem is very slim.