Hello Roberto

I had been considering yoghurt cartons and string.

I did switch off and unplug just before 5.30 pm as I heard rumblings of thunder. It never developed into what I imaged from appearances and the Met Office prediction so I could probably have got away with leaving well alone. I�ve just switched back on and there�s a decrease of 20 kbps in the line rate, which won�t affect my profile that ought to go up a notch in the next few days.

Be very careful if the string gets wet, which is likely in a thunderstorm.

Seriously, I once had a customer have all six ethernet cards blown on his network. But these days, as others have said, on my home setup I just cross fingers and hope.

What did happen on ADSL was a thunderstorm was guaranteed to wreck the sync speed, but on O2 LLU it didn't matter. No problem on FTTC with the few since Feb, (no loss of sync according to tbb BQM), so the weak point looks to be on the E-side. Which is known to be dodgy at the best of times, and was one of my reasons for going to FTTC.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 08-Jul-11 11:03:25)

LOL

If my synch ever suffected a long term reduction as a result of a storm I'd consider a move to O2 LLU and escape bRAS. Most people I know seem happy with it but I've had to define ISP to two of them so....?

My hope is to stay with my present ISP for ever, through a house move next year and FTTC upgrade. My current widespread exchange has no date set for FTTC, which is a pain because if I move within the same exchange it will take me further from the actual exchange building (under 1 km straight line). The neighbouring exchange, another likely place to relocate, has had FTTC put back until next June but at least it's a date in view. That would be fab because the properties I'd consider are only a few strides from the exchange.

Not everything. Only stuff that's sensitive to voltage spikes, & no, those so called surge protectors won't save you if the lightning strike is nearby.

4 * Computers / router / 2 ** printers (all on 3 multiway leads).

TV / sat boxes / blu-ray box (again on multiway lead)

That's not many plugs (4) to pull (+ the adsl lead), & saves them blowing up / losing data, etc.

As I said, I've seen to much kit as a black, burnt out mess.

Be careful about moving very close to an exchange if you want FTTC, as you may find you are connected direct to the exchange. Hence no cabinet. Hence no FTTC.

Several of us here can probably check the cabinet serving a postcode, though whether that would exclude the possibility of some lines not going through it I don't know.

Huge thanks for that tip, Roberto. I'm going to drive around that locale this weekend to ensure there is a cabinet between likely properties and the exchange. I'd proably be on the opposite side of a main road to the side road where the exchange is located.

I've never turned my router off during a thunderstorm.

In fact if anything more things are turned on during a storm.

The thunder and rain mean everyone comes inside, sits on facebook, watches tele, does the washing, whatever... Once it stops and becomes sunny we head back outside.

& I've never seen my sync drop during a storm and I've monitored my SNR before, it didn't change.

Everythings a risk in life.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

& I've never seen my sync drop during a storm and I've monitored my SNR before, it didn't change.

My Sky D-Link router spontaneously rebooted once during a thunder storm. Either it was very sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation caused by the lightning, or the power supply had a brief flicker (which sometimes happens here during thunder storms). Also, I did have a Compaq laptop plugged into the phone line during a thunder storm about 15 years ago which managed to fry the internal dialup modem, but the house phones were unaffected.

However, it doesn't really concern me enough to unplug anything during thunder storms, and the Compaq is the first and last item of electrical equipment I've had which was (probably) damaged by lightning.

Had a T-storm here about two weeks ago. It took out my router, the power supply in one of my PCs, a power supply on a DECT phone and a heated towel rail in the bathroom!

However, in a way it did me a favour as I bought a totally different router and that performs way better than the old one. Whenever I hear a rumble now, I pull the power and phone line on the router and all the power plugs on my PCs. I have had to do that several times in the last week, it has not changed my 6m profile and it always re-syncs at more or less the same speed

Me neither

I figure the powered TV aerial will take the hit first