Thunderstorms

I wonder if someone could explain why my adsl connection is so sensitive to thunderstorms. The only overhead element in my link to the exchange is from the pole at the bottom of my garden to the house. I have spike protection on the power supplies. But if there are thunderstorms around - even if just audible but not visible - my link crashes, and then resets for a few minutes before crashing again, often 50 times before I get so fed up I turn the router off

Broadband is on medium wave radio frequencies and so behaves in a thunderstorm like a medium wave radio

Max DSL runs the line as fast as it can go which lowers the signal's strength. So it's like listening to Radio Caroline in a thunderstorm.

Best off disconnecting kit in a storm anyway, aside from the risk of the line being struck by lightning, the exchange line management kit may well decide to lower synch speeds and switch on interleaving to compensate for the deteriorated signal.

Thanks for the explanation. Yet another consequence of global warming!

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Best off disconnecting kit in a storm anyway,

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Too true.

I have a friend with a cottage in the country hence his service is delivered by overground... he was out of the cottage during a recent intense thunderstorm when one of the poles some distance away took a direct hit from lightening. The overhead lines and his router were both fried

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Yet another consequence of global warming!

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Erm, not really.



You should unplug everything that is valuable from the wall sockets in a thunder storm. A decent surge and spike suppressor costs from

Post deleted by BLOODUK

Rubbish? I know we're getting off topic and I'll shut up, but I'm surprised that anyone can believe that the recent weather patterns can't *possibly* have anything to do with global warming

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I'm surprised that anyone can believe that the recent weather patterns can't *possibly* have anything to do with global warming

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Heh. Global warming is the new Millenium bug marketing scam.

It's so amusing that too many people fall for all this throughout the world. The earth and its weather has been changing like this way before man was ever on the planet. Granted we aren't helping with all the pollution, but it has been changing for a long time before we we're ever here.
Yet all the scientists and marketing people jump the bandwagon with obsession to claim all the stuff we're doing or causing is creating all these problems.

While we are on the subject of thunderstorms, I think I'll do that next time. Disconnect the DSL link. When we had lightning here a few days ago. The line dropped out and the router rebooted. The line to the router however is surge protected, but in future when lightning storms are here. I think I'll leave the link unplugged just incase.

The router is still fine however. Just I noticed the router had rebooted itself when there was a flash near by.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Jul-07 18:30:54)

My parents got a fried Sky box when the dish was hit a few years ago