Can cables fry?

[Caveman]

Took a solid lightening strike at the house a few nights ago... Took out at least 1 smoke alarm...

Internet seemed to work fine but noticed that printer stopped working...

Then realized that drop (1 of 12 in house) does not work...

The 3 other drops on main floor work... Will test others upstairs tomorrow... Wouldn't the Switch be the most likely fail point, and not the cable itself?

I have a Buffalo Airstream Router, but one person I talked to said the Router's probably fine - that if it was fried it probably wouldn't work at all...

He also said cables can fry...

If so, I'm hoping it's one of the short patch cables...

Comments anyone?

 

[ScottMac]

Yeah, sure.

Plastic coated copper, no magic there. It'll fry up jus' fine.

 

[drebo]

It's probably more likely that you fried the switchport, but it's possible you melted some of the ethernet cable...it's not really meant for high voltage.

 

[RebateMonger]

A single port on a swtich can fail while the rest of the switch continues working. Years ago I had a nine-port 10BaseT switch that connected to a CAT5 cable that ran 150 feet on top of my roof. (This is NOT a recommended practice, but there weren't many alternatives at the time).

The switch port that was connected to the cable failed. I moved the connector to a different port, and that, too, failed after several months. Only the ports that were connected to the "outside" cable quit working. I worked my way across the 9-port switch, killing four ports before I changed to a new 10/100 Linksys switch that seemed to handle this job more reliably.

A friend is STILL using that old 10BaseT switch, avoiding connecting to the ports where I've penned an "X".

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: ScottMac
Yeah, sure.

Plastic coated copper, no magic there. It'll fry up jus' fine.

I worked for a wISP for a while, and they were cheap bastards and never bought us any grounding boxes for using on installs. Most installs were below the roof line, some were about at or on the roofline if there were trees around or if we were mounting to the chimney.

Well we had some nasty thunderstorms one day, and got in several trouble calls for failed equipment. Someone had installed, on a house that was at least 200 yards from any trees, not just our CPE, but a CPE with a reflector, all on a 6' high tripod that was on a 3 story house.

the dish had a huge black scorch mark on it, and from the CPE to the point of entry in the home, the cat5 wire was burn and broken in a dozen places. Inside the home the router they were using took part of the hit and flashed, and when there was a black scorch mark around the base of the thing on the table it was kept on.

somehow we didnt get sued...and my manager convinced them to call their homeowners insurance to pay for the replacement work.

its amazing that homes havent burned down from that company.

 

[ScottMac]

Yeah, ther's just not much you can do against lightning. On my ham radio stuff, I have a series of "EMP Rated" lightning arrestors / surge protectors. I was hit 3.5 times (.5 = Near Hit)and it still wasted anything connected, whether it was energized or not.

I learned to just disconnect everything that wasn't in-use. With all of the protection stuff I had inline, and with a grounding field of three eight-foot copper rods tig-weld bonded together by four-inch copper strap ... there was still enough energy at the equipment end to fry off half of a PL-259 connector.

The primary function for most of the "protectors" are to bleed environmental static and the traveling charge field from a thundercloud. It's easy enough to build a massive charge on the wire, you can easily eat any kind of semiconductor-based equipment. Bleeding static is a Very Good Thing. However, once you see the bright flash, you're hosed. Lightning travels hundred of yards to nail your antenna-looking object, a 1/4 inch gap in a gas popper ain't gonna save ya.

 

[bruceb]

ScottMac .. What grade of ham ticket do you have ? ? ? What call sign ? ? I have my General, but I haven't hooked up my old Heathkit stuff in over 10 years. WA2HWV here in NJ

 

[ScottMac]

WV9A - Extra Class, Chicago .

Since I moved into a townhome (Owner's Association) I have not been on any of the low bands.

When I lived in the city proper (NW side) I had a inverted trap V (40&80), a Cushcraft 5 band vertical (10, 12, 15, 20, 30), an x500 Diamond (2m, 440 terrestrial), and a dual (tri for a while) band satellite array (20 El 2m, 40 el 440, dual stacked quad 1200M). I talked (packet) from MIR & some of the shuttles. It was a hoot, I had a lot of fun with it.

We run a little repeater up in Black River Falls, WI too, when we're up there. We cover a couple hundred acres with some small 1/4W HTs. and can talk to each other from around most of the two county area on mobile 440s. (cell is kind weak up in the sticks, we do better with HTs)

 

[Rifter]

Wow i need more sleep, i read this title as Can cables fly?

Anyways yes they can(fry not fly! lol) i have seen more than a few Cat5 runs melt from lightning strikes because they were run the wrong way and not grounded or even from a switch that gets a big spike. it happens.

 

[bruceb]

I see you did the upgrade to Extra in 2000 after the 20WPM code requirement was dropped. That is when I went from Tech to General.
To get my Extra, I would need to bone up on Theory and the current rules / regs as they are always changing.

 

[ScottMac]

I did it in 1990/91 when the 20wpm code requirement was in effect.

I think the code requirement was dropped a few years after I renewed.

and now back to the topic ....

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: drebo
It's probably more likely that you fried the switchport, but it's possible you melted some of the ethernet cable...it's not really meant for high voltage.

Yeah that was my first thought as well, I'd think any electronics would fail long before the cable. It's kind of like Murphy's law, the more expensive a component is the more likely it will be the first to fail.