APC Surge Protector for Ethernet Data Port (10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet Lines), ProtectNet (PNET1GB)

We have a lot of electrical storms here, and because we have devices outside connected with CAT6 cable (generator, 5Ghz dish for our internet etc.) I wanted those incoming connections to go through a surge suppressor before plugging into my network switch, even though they are also fully shielded and grounded connections. It never hurts to be save with all the electrical storms we have around here. I bought a couple of these things back in 2015 and took the time to mount and properly ground them well. Then in 2017 I bought a couple more for additional devices, trusting that they still do the job but never really knowing since despite all the electrical storms we've had, nothing has been struck and nothing has gone out. Perhaps that in itself is a testament to these things... but I still wasn't sure if these had capability to absorb multiple hits, or if they are single use. That changed this past weekend. We had a killer electrical storm right above our house and at the same moment we saw a massive lightning strike, the power went out for a few seconds and our internet went out and stayed out. (We get our internet from the 5Ghz dish outside from a nearby mountain since there is nothing else available in our area.) The dish seemed okay. The POE injector was still sending power, the radio on the back still had activity and RX lights, the link on my switch port was still showing 100Mbps full duplex, but no internet. I tried everything... replacing the POE injector, rebooting the dish and even leaving the dish's radio unplugged for 24h to drain it completely. I was about to go order a new radio and then thought, "hey, why not remove the surge suppressor" even though network and power seemed to be passing through it just fine. That was it! the lightning must have caused enough of a surge to trigger it. Once I removed it and replaced it with a new one, my dish was back online. So, here's some proof that these things actually work. Happy to buy a replacement for $23 vs. a new switch for hundreds (assuming it would have gone through to my switch... and if that's true, where would it go from there!)

I always wondered if this item would truly do it's job. Some of the reviews have not been favorable and some are. Now I have real world experience with this Surge Protector. My signal comes in via coaxial to the modem which is connected to old Asus router I was using as my wi-fi access point. This Asus Router was connected, via an Ethernet cable, to an expensive Cisco Commercial Router. I parked the APC Surge Protector at the end of that Ethernet Cable and then plugged the other end of the APC into my commercial router's WAN. It sat there for quite a while and I had no idea if it was actually going to work. Sometime in the last week the coaxial cable coming into my home experienced some type of surge (probably lightning) that ran up the line to the modem, then through the Ethernet Cable connected to the Asus Router, through the outgoing Ethernet cable connected to the APC Surge Protector. That surge evidenced itself as follows: Burnt connections in the outside coaxial cable as well as my inside coaxial cable running to the alcove where my equipment is installed. It then proceeded to fry the modem (owned by the ISP, so no harm no foul) thru the Ethernet Cable (which was also burnt out) connected to the Asus Router. It fried the Asus Router then and ran down the Ethernet cable with the APC Surge Protector at the end which was connected to the Commercial Router. Bottom line is the lightning strike took out everything (including Ethernet Cables) all the way up to the APC Surge Protector. It protected that router as well as my expensive CAT 6 cabling throughout the residence. In other words, the APC Surge Protector DID IT'S JOB.

I bought one of these a few months ago, upgrading from the old 10mbs version I have. I usually unplug my cable modem from the coax when leaving for a long stretch of time and thunderstorms are forecast. This time my daughter decided to hop on the network and reconnect the modem that afternoon before one of the worst thunderstorms we've had here in 10+ years. Long story short - cable modem FRIED from near-direct lightning strike, but my router, voip ata, and computer (which all sits on another APC surge strip) went completely unscathed. Not only do I own this product, but can vouch that it works - like it SHOULD. Many other products out there really don't have what it takes under the hood to repel surges and strikes, instead relying on inconvenient insurance policies "stickered" onto cheap products. The point is to PROTECT, not INSURE. If you want an insurance policy, go to your local big-box store and get a regular $3 power strip then go to your insurance agent and schedule out a insurance policy. If you want to PROTECT your equipment... buy this.

***2 YEAR UPDATE (JUNE 2014) Device has never needed "re-connecting" and seems to be working perfectly. It's a cheap piece of equipment insurance that I assume will work and it still seems to fully be passing all my network activity. I will be buying another one of these to install in another location where I'm connecting a bunch of IP camera cat6 cables to a hub and the hub to my main router. PS I now think the internals of this are a "copper-to-copper" type connection (meaning copper from the cable touches copper that touches the next cable), so it would not be passing electrons through a circuit board, which is always the situation where a device might need to be reset or re-seated. **************************** It's really hard to rate a surge protector before its protects... :-( I really struggled with this, but I have to dock 1 star simply because it hasn't protected yet. When it blows up and my gigabit switch behind it is perfectly fine, I'll come back with a 5-star rating. So I'll start with my negatives: CONS: -According to the paper insert, it's got a fair amount of lead, makes sure to wash your hands after handling, as you always should when handling cables. -Confusing on where to attach the ground wire, which obviously seems like the whole point of this mechanism. -No way of knowing if the cables ever need to be re-seated during a system reset -No way of knowing if the unit is still functioning properly. The last one is hard to chew on. Maybe this isn't a consumer device, otherwise I think they would include instructions or advice for software to test network activity and throughput. PROS: -Small and simple -Easy to connect -Velcro stickies to keep it from flopping around -Short patch cable (too short for my use) -10/100/1000 Base - T ethernet, not just 10/100 I am using this in my Main Room media center. It is grounded to the special ground screw on the Belkin AP41300fc10 PF60 PureAV Home Theater Power Console - Black . The 2 combined provide all the protection and power management that I personally want and it is working perfect for me. The Belkin PF60 does not have ethernet protection on it and even if it did like some of the competition, it would only be 10/100 Base T. There are not a good amount of options to protect gigabit ethernet. Every surge protector I looked for was only 10/100 Base T. The price seems a few dollars too high, because one can buy an entire surge protector power strip for this amount, but it really is about the only option and I do like the standalone option.

I picked up 3 of these for providing surge protection between my Xfinity cable modem/router (rented from Comcast) and my equipment. The cable modem has 4 ethernet ports. I am a bit paranoid about having only the cable modem between the incoming cable and my equipment. Why? Over the last few years I've had 3 surges through the cable coax (probably from lightning) that resulted in damaged equipment downstream from the modem. It seems apparent that whatever protection Comcast has out at the street is not effective. My UPS has a surge protector for an ethernet connection, but that covers only one device; hence, the need for 3 of these to cover the remaining ports. The nice thing about these surge protectors is their small footprint and single purpose design, exactly what my scheme needs. A short cat-5 cable comes in the package so in some sense nothing extra is required for adding one of these protectors to an existing cat-5 line. What I mean by "in some sense" is that you do have to attach the green pig tail wire to a grounding line, and a duplex plug may or may not be close enough for you to hook onto its center screw. A solution to consider is as follows: pick up a 3 prong repair plug and hook up 12 gauge wire to the ground pin connection (leaving the power blades floating). That provides a secure, pluggable ground which can be extended to where it can be connected to the surge protector across a bus bar. Assuming these surge protectors are as effective as other reviews indicate (something I hope to never find out), I couldn't be more pleased.

As an IT Pro, I install the complete network infrastructure for residential and small business clients. This is an absolute must between the the your ISP's cable modem or dsl modem and your network gear. It is cheap insurance to protect all of that equipment, and I can't believe the number of networks that I encounter that don't have this type of surge protector in place. For example, one of my restaurant clients received a direct lightning hit on the cable modem line and sustained over $40k in damage because every networked component got scorched, including the server, network switches, all point of sale systems, networked hvac sensors, and the router. Had this been installed, the ProtectNet would have taken the hit and prevented all of that damage. The good: Inexpensive, easy to install (must be properly grounded to work properly), and it does the job. The bad: If it takes the hit, it will need to be replaced (cannot be reset). Summary: Protect your expensive computer equipment, and get this installed on your network as soon as possible.

This LAN surge protector is used to protect a Wi-Fi router connected with an ethernet cable to a cable modem 100 feet away. Lake other reviewer‘s I found that out of the box there was no continuity through the unit so I returned it for a replacement. The replacement passes a signal through. There’s no way of telling if the unit is doing its job of protecting from surges because there are no lights to indicate anything at all, so I guess that if it explodes or if it stops passing a signal and the router is still OK then it has done it’s job. Also, the screw securing the green ground wire cannot be an oval or flat head because these types of screws will dislodge the ground wire terminal when the screw is tightened.

My house has whole-house protection in the breakers, but never thought about protecting the ethernet lines. I had a lighting issue that took out a few devices connected through physical wires. Lost 2 switches, 2 mesh nodes and a number of AV equipment that has physical wires instead of wifi. This lead me to suspect I needed a network cable solution. Do these work? Not sure as I'm doing this proactively however the reviews here suggest it does. Went with this brand over something generic as the cost difference was not an issue when you think about the potential $$ savings. My only concern was impact to speed. Older comments here suggest it does slow down, but that has NOT been my experience. I have gig-fiber going into my home. Still getting 900s with this device in. Note there is overhead in bandwidth so getting 1000 is not expected. It may have slowed it down a tad bit, but not enough to matter to me given the piece of mind. I installed mine between the cable from the wall into my AT&T cable modem thus protecting it and all devices downstream from it. I have a number of downstream switches after the cable modem that I may purchased couple more for those switches, but so far no noticeable impact to my network. Time will tell when/if I get hit again, but for now a proactive peace of mind.

実際に落雷に遭わないと評価できないので ネームバリューのある製品を選んだ。

This simple to use device offers a good level of protection against the potential damage caused by induced currents on ethernet cables. They just plug in-line with your existing ethernet cables, and have a 30cm bonding cable that has to be linked to a good Earth point. After extending my home network 30metres to an out building, using a roof-roof Cat6 cable, I started to think about the impact of lightning induced currents passing up and down the cable into my router and switches. I wanted something that could be easily installed into the existing set up and a search came up with these. APC have lots of industry qualified products suitable for a large range of equipments and scenarios, all aimed at surge current and over-voltage protection. So they appear well spec'd. Following the instructions I put one at each end of my exposed link cable adjacent to the Netgear switches; as an earth bonding point I used a mains inlet earth. I chose this approach rather than running a dedicated bonding cable back to the consumer units in the two buildings as it would have been a bit of a routing challenge. Can I tell if they are working? no, but then I've not noticed any impact on my 1Gb inter-building speed. They are cleared to 1000BaseT the Amazon description is incorrect. Hopefully I'll never notice them working when the next lightning storm passes by.

Upload reduziert sich um ~1 Mbit. Download unverändert. DSLAM ist aber direkt vor dem Haus. Leitungskapazität reduziert sich um 12 Mbit im Download und 4 Mbit im Upload. Da diese in meinem Fall bei 139 Mbit liegt werden die 100 Mbit des VDSL Anschlusses jedoch immer noch problemlos erreicht. Im Upload machen sich die 4 Mbit verlust auf der Leitungskapazität als 1 Mbit Verlust bei der effektiven Uploadrate bemerkbar. Wer also eine hohe Leitungskapazität, sprich eine gute Anbindung an den DSLAM hat, wird eher durch den Provider begrenzt als durch den Überspannungsschutz. In meinem Fall bin ich daher sehr zufrieden. Wenn die Leitungskapazität jedoch in etwa der gebuchten Leistung entspricht, muss man mit einem spürbaren Geschwindigkeitsverlust rechnen.

So far working OK>

This worked great, protecting my ethernet now and in addition can handle my gigabit connection without limiting bandwidth (I can use full gigabit down/up)