Storm || Fried NIC || Router and PC

[burnm3w1thf1r3]

So we had a storm the other night that involved lightning. I don't believe the house was hit because we never lost power however somehow the NIC on my shutdown desktop fried and the in ethernet port on the router fried. The out ports on the router were fine and the router itself (minus the in port) was fine, and the modem was fine.

I could connect to the router, access every option of it (wirelessly and wired) but it was not getting any data from the modem. I plugged directly into the modem and got a signal. I tried several cables and such and came to the conclusion that the in port on the router had fried (only the in).

On my desktop (the only hard wired computer on our network), which was off at the time of the storm had no internet. No matter if I had an ethernet plugged in or not it said I had limited or no connectivity to my network. I checked the Device Manager (Windows 7) and my Network Adapter was not showing up, however the virtual ones were). I tried running the driver for my NIC and it could not find a valid NIC. So this told me that my NIC got fried also.

My overall question is... How do I prevent this in the future? Is there any way other than just unplugging everything pre-storm? Or is there a surge protector equivalent for ethernets? The other minor question I have is, why/how did the NICs in general fry, yet the overall devices were intact? And especially my desktop NIC which was off at the time?

Thank you in advanced for any information! I will check this periodically throughout the week so if any information is required I will answer it asap!

 

[johnb35]

Surges can go through cables whether the equipment is on or not. You can get power surge protectors that also have ethernet protection. However, your best bet is to unplug everything when storm is coming through.

 

[beers]

You can use fiber optics for a home network, but it's extremely cost prohibitive for basic usage. Copper based connectivity will always be exhibited to power spikes and similar depending on the origination of the surge. It'd be a lot cheaper to simply replace dead components instead, such as a router or NIC.

And especially my desktop NIC which was off at the time?

Most NICs utilize standby power from the PSU. This is how features like Wake on LAN operate, where you can bring the PC out of an off or sleep state. Even if your PC is off, the NIC is still active. As per John, a device also doesn't have to necessarily be 'on' for a spike to traverse the physical cabling.