Anybody have experience with lightning/ESD/ground issues with outdoor ethernet equip?

[Tractor Seabee]

I used to engineer these kind of systems all day everyday. In my opinion You need protection, and the only kind of protection fast enough to really keep transients from destroying sensitive electronics is protectors with fast avalanche diodes. Gas discharge tubes can help shunt large currents but fire too slowly to prevent puncture of delicate pn junctions in electronics. Again in my opinion, the brand most used by commercial users is Transtector/Polyphaser. These products are not cheap per unit price but in my experience they are very effective. I used to specify them anytime they were justified. This protector includes a hybrid technology of the fast avalanche diodes and the power handling of gas discharge. Also experience has taught us to make sure that there is at least 20 foot of cable between the protector and the equipment. This propagation delay in the copper allows the clamping effect time to occur.

https://www.amazon.com/Smiths-Power...ge+suppressor&qid=1566759376&s=gateway&sr=8-4

All of that said, anytime you can do away with outside wires the better off you will be. Wireless is the way to go if you can make it happen.

KOua, in my younger day when I was a facility manager for a military, base we had a lot of security and communication systems that were ethernet of several types. I had my own technicians to maintain the systems so naturally I got pretty involved especially new installs and upgrades. All cable was braid shielded. One of the basic precepts from factory manuals and techs was to ground the braid only at the main frame and avoid connections to other grounds including the cabinets that were grounded per electrical code. The connection points for the ethernet were isolated from the cabinet. Contractor on new installs invariably paid not attention so we had to go through every cabinet and disconnect the grounds to the cabinet. Factory techs explained that there are always transients and noise on the AC power circuits. I always combed the specs for new project for this and insisted the designers add that language. Enforcement of government construction sucks.

What is your take on that?

 

[k0ua]

KOua, in my younger day when I was a facility manager for a military, base we had a lot of security and communication systems that were ethernet of several types. I had my own technicians to maintain the systems so naturally I got pretty involved especially new installs and upgrades. All cable was braid shielded. One of the basic precepts from factory manuals and techs was to ground the braid only at the main frame and avoid connections to other grounds including the cabinets that were grounded per electrical code. The connection points for the ethernet were isolated from the cabinet. Contractor on new installs invariably paid not attention so we had to go through every cabinet and disconnect the grounds to the cabinet. Factory techs explained that there are always transients and noise on the AC power circuits. I always combed the specs for new project for this and insisted the designers add that language. Enforcement of government construction sucks.

What is your take on that?

The current thinking is for an SPG. Single Point Ground. Everything is to be grounded to a single point. Everything. No grounds running thru anything else, no grounding "at each end" etc. Towers, Radios, surge protector grounds. All to one place. Everything is supposed rise at the same rate and potential. The idea is to keep current from flowing from place to place.

As we all know, though no matter what you do, And actual direct strike is gonna get ya. It is the thousands of "nearby" strikes that we can avoid with proper grounding bonding and protection with fast devices. Earth currents can flow for a long distance to equalize a strike, so "nearby" doesn't have to be all that near. most people think of lightning as an aerial phenomena, but what happens in the earth beneath our feet is just as important. Anytime you put a copper wire in the ground, you are ASKING for trouble. Anytime you run a copper wire outside the protective shell of a building, you are asking for trouble. AND depending on where you live, and how many strikes "nearby" you get each year, and even the soil conductivity trouble will find you.

Think about a professional installation like a cell phone tower and equipment hut. Do they have lots of sensitive equipment? Yep. Do they have a big fat tower sticking up in the air? Yep. Do they turn off and unplug that equipment? Nope. But they do single point ground the he77 out of everything. Including running wire around the inside of the hut ceiling, and floor, all racks every coax etc All feeds from the outside world, etc. They spend thousands of dollars on Lightning protection and bonding and grounding. Do they still lose stuff? Occasionally, but they have learned to avoid much disaster by these techniques.

 

[ten300]

+1 for pulling fiber through there. Get cheap 4 port or whatever you need switches that have an available SFP port to put on each end and then get the appropriate fiber sfp from fs.com for $10 along with preterminated fiber from them. We never do any outbuilding with copper anymore, just cheap preterminated fiber in conduit and call it a day. Amazing what you can do now for the price compared to 10 years ago no homeowner could have afforded that