Surge Protection and Arc Fault Detection

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I have protection in my main cabinet similar to the ABB ones that you posted, I have expensive MOV SPD's protecting my heat pumps (I think they were around 140 Euro each).  The Ethernet protectors are the Transient Voltage Suppressing Diode type - basically a Zener diode that when an overvoltage happens it is shorted to ground.  The beauty of these are that if it is a large overvoltage it just blows the diode so the other side is isolated and the protection is fail safe in the sense that the equipment is protected but you will no longer have ethernet until you replace the device.  This is how the properly designed MOV's work as well.  On my heat pumps for example if the MOV's are blown it will short and actually trip the breaker.  If I go to turn the breaker back on and it trips immediately, that would be the first thing I would check.

As far as how did the transient get into my Ethernet line - good question.  I don't believe it came from DSL because the initial modem/router was continuing to function perfectly.  My son is an electrical engineer working for ABB and specializes in grounding protection for substations in the power grid.  His theory is that since I have Ethernet lines that are extremely long (several that are over 100M) his belief is that all it would take is a fairly close lightning strike going somewhat perpendicular to one of my long lines and the line would act like an antenna and pick up a large surge just from the radiation of the lightning - it would not have to be a direct hit to cause this.  

I've actually gone so far as to wrap each 1-Wire sensor through a double ferrite coil as well as the end of the line that connects into my 1-Wire extension.  The wrap will suppress any high frequency transients.

I did talk to the engineer that works at a ski slope across the valley from us, he chuckled and said that even with all the suppression systems they have they still lose servers and equipment each year, you just do your best.  They do not have Ehternet problems like me anymore because they switched everything to fiber.  I don't think I'll go that far.

Goto Ctech Trade to know more.

But again - keep it all in perspective Living on a mountain is pretty sweet but it comes with it's own headaches.  I point to the trees on the North side of the house and ask my friends which ones do you suppose have been hit by lighting - there are a half dozen of them with the tops blown off.  In a normal village the storms would not be nearly as bad.

Wiki is a good source for understanding how the various SPD's work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_protector

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