Power Protection Primer

Everything here is based on 18 years of experience in the IT business, plus some real nasty personal pain after a lightning strike. As I said in the above disclaimer, everything in this page is used at your own risk and is no way is a grantee that you will never suffer damage or problems, so use at your own risk, all I can say is that it helped me and others avoid damage.

From personal experience I learned the hard way to protect everything, not only computer systems, but also things like TVs/Videos etc. A number of years back while living overseas, I suffered a very close lightning strike, but thankfully having been warned that this was a common occurrence, had protected everything with various types of protection. The only damage was a fried PC power supply, a colorful TV picture, and a pile of fuses for the kitchen appliances. This compared to others in the same building who suffered fried TVs and computers, was nothing.

After this experience I am now totally paranoid, and if its physically possible, put a surge suppression device on everything electrical, plus protection for every phone line, all data connections, and yes even the TV antenna is protected. This may sound overkill, but nothings ever been damaged or destroyed by power problems, since I started being this paranoid.

Its up to you, take the risk and just replace anything thats damaged, or spend much less and protect your self.

Protection Devices

Covered in this section are the specific devices that I use personally and recommend others use. Now you will see that all are made by American Power Conversion a company who's products I have used, both personally and professionally, for many years with no problems of any kind, which is as good a recommendation that I can make. Anyway enough waffle now onto the specifics. BTW. No I don't work for APC, nor do I have any connection to them other than using their products.

• Mains Power. This, as if anyone needed to be told, is the most important protection you can have, and the most confusing to find suitable devices, given the huge number available. The most usual device is a surge suppressor thats built into a power strip, which is also the most economical, as one device can protect multiple computers etc. Now there are a vast number of these things on the market, ranging in price from AUD$10 (yes really!) up to several hundred. And yes the old saying "You get what you pay for" rings true, with some of the cheaper ones I have seen results ranging from the classic "when we turn on the coffee machine and the server crashes" to "is smoke bad?". Not good? I use APC PERSONAL SURGEARREST 5 OUTLET, which is the updated version of a device that saved me.
  
  These things are easily to find, not that expensive, being less than AUD$100 here, which is much less than replacing fried electronics.
  
  Now this is not the only form of device available to protect you this sort of power problem, the next step up from these things is to get a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) which not only does the same job as the spike blocks, but also can power your machine for a short time and then safely shut it down before the power fails.
  
  
  
  Yes just as with the spike blocks these things range in price from around the AUD$100 up to several thousand, but in this case "you get what you pay for" only partly applies, in that if you are very careful, cheap is not always bad, just be sure to stick to APC. In my case for my small server (a P2-233) I recently went for one of the APC BackUPS CS entry level UPS. This interesting device is my first exposure to the low end of the APC UPS, and so far has done its job well, with not a single problem, which has led me to order another one to run my network switch and router. The best bit is these things start at around AUD$120.
  

  IMPORTANT: When choosing a UPS you have to make sure its got the correct capacity for the hardware you want to protect with it. Doing this used to be something of a "best guess", but now things have improved, in that APC has a Online UPS Selection/sizing tool which makes getting the right one for your hardware easy.

• Phone lines. Do not count on your phone company to protect you from lightning strikes to phone lines, they only protect exchange hardware. Just as with the Mains Power protection I talked about above there are many devices that claim to offer phone line protection, some come integrated with Mains Power suppression devices, indeed there are versions of the APC units I use, that do. Now I have no personal experience with these integrated devices, so cannot comment on how well they work. I have always used external devices, which for the past few years have been various versions of the APC PTel. In addition to this protection I also strongly recommend that any mains powered phones/fax/modems etc are also protected as detailed in the Mains Power notes above.
  
  Is it worth it? well to me yes, these things are around the AUD$60 mark, which is considerably less than the cost of replacing fried phones, fax or modems.
• Ethernet. With Ethernet networks I use a two stage protection plan, first the power for all network hardware such as switches, hubs, routers, cable modems etc is protected as I talked about in the Mains Power section, then the actual Ethernet is protected but not on every connection which would be overkill even by my standards. The only Ethernet links that need protection are external links, such as Ethernet connected cable or ADSL modems. For these I use APC PROTECTNET 100BT/10BT/TR", in the cable from the modem to PC, Hub, Router, Switch etc.

  The problem of cable modems, and power spikes, has been reported on whirlpool.net, which only serves to illustrate that this is a real problem. The cost for protection is around the AUD$50 mark, again much cheaper than replacing your PC.

• TV/Video Etc. As with everything else, you start by protecting the Mains Power as I talked about above, which as I also said saved me from a dead TV. Now this is not the only protection you need, you also need to protect.
  • TV Antenna. Well its outside so is vulnerable to lightning. There are devices that can be put inline to protect you, but they are not that easy to find. I found one in Hong Kong, which does not claim to be made by anyone. So I cannot recommend anything here, so suggest that you ask for advice with your local electronics store.
  • Cable TV. Yes its possible, if rare to get power spikes this way, and just like the phone company its not likely that your cable TV company will protect you. There are devices that have coax connections that are intended to protect you, but I have no experience with these, Belkin makes one.
  In my case I found a device that sits inline on the video and audio cables from the cable box to the TV, but just like the antenna device, I found this thing in Hong Kong, so cannot recommend anything for you to use. Again consult you local electronics store for advise.

Links and Related Pages

• American Power Conversion Home
• The Great Power Pike, by Jerry Pournelle
• Lightning Primer from NASA.
• Lightning Protection Article from cnn.com