Thunderstorm killed my network!

[TNW]

We had a pretty intense thunderstorm here a couple of nights ago, with lots of lightning that seemed to be occurring very close by. The following morning I found that our wifi was not working. The network comprises of a cheap O2 provided Zykel broadband modem and then a number of Apple AirPort express devices and a single combined Airport / Time Capsule all configured to bridge the network as wifi around the house. All of the AirPorts are connected back to the modem via copper as the house has cat 6.

After a bit of testing and trying a few things including factory resets, it seems that the ethernet ports on all of the apple kit are no longer functioning at a hardware level, yet the ports they were connected to on the Zykel modem are all still working o.k (which is a bit odd). All of the Apple kit powers up, with the wifi working, I just can't get any connection via the ethernet ports, not even a light on the port when it's connected back to back to the modem in the same cabinet.

Everything else in the house that was connected to the Modem is fine including smart T.V etc. The lighting conductor on the roof doesn't' look like it took a hit either, so guess it was just close by.

Wondering if anyone else has experienced this and if Apple networking kit is partially susceptible to being fried by thunderstorms? Maybe it's best to replace it with something else as it's not uncommon to have large storms here.

Edited by TNW on Tuesday 13th August 17:45

[Phil.]

We had a lightning strike a couple of weeks ago and it caused c.£3k in damage to electrical items most of which were switched off but plugged in. The list includes:

2 x Sky boxes
2 x TV’s
PC graphics card
PC monitor
2 x fire sticks
Etc.

First time ever for me. But according to the insurers they were many others in the same situation as were my next door neighbors.

I will unplug everything in future if there is the threat of lightning.

[bigmowley]

Quite a regular occurrence with us as we live on a hill, not that high, 150M, but right at the end of the telephone line. Almost every big thunderstorm we used to loose the modem, or router, even if the lightening isn't that close we can have issues. I assume that it must travel down the telephone supply cable as there are a lot of overhead lines on the way to us. A couple of times it has blown the front completely off the master phone socket, necessitating a new socket each time. Now I just disconnect the main phone line in when the weather is forecast thundery and use 4G from my phone until the bad weather has passed.

[megaphone]

Phil. said:

We had a lightning strike a couple of weeks ago and it caused c.£3k in damage to electrical items most of which were switched off but plugged in. The list includes:

2 x Sky boxes
2 x TV’s
PC graphics card
PC monitor
2 x fire sticks
Etc.

First time ever for me. But according to the insurers they were many others in the same situation as were my next door neighbors.

I will unplug everything in future if there is the threat of lightning.

It probably hit the Sky dish or TV aerial, then through the co-ax ground to the other devices. You'll need to unplug the dish and aerial if you want to save it happening again, but be warned, you can get killed if you're touching the cable when lightning strikes.

[Phil.]

megaphone said:

It probably hit the Sky dish or TV aerial, then through the co-ax ground to the other devices. You'll need to unplug the dish and aerial if you want to save it happening again, but be warned, you can get killed if you're touching the cable when lightning strikes.

You’re probably correct but one of the PC’s affected wasn’t connected to co-ax and was completely separate from the Sky boxes. Good point on not touching anything during a strike!

[Derek Smith]

After a lightening strike ruined the motherboard and cpu on my desktop, I bought extension leads with surge resistors. I unplug them at night but there was an electrical storm during the day and I rather stupidly didn't unplug. Two extension leads were hit, one completely blown, the other just damaged one socket, the one leading to the desktop. It could have been a doh! moment.

[Liamjrhodes]

During the lightening storm a couple of weeks ago we had a strike that struck ground around 1 mile from our house.
Killed Sky router and Sky Q box. Not sure why they were the only items that were killed as we had a TV, soundbar and Xbox all plugged into the same ports/sockets.

Sky came and replaced the damaged items a few days later and had no problems soon but have now fitted surge protectors

[Zetec-S]

Derek Smith said:

After a lightening strike ruined the motherboard and cpu on my desktop, I bought extension leads with surge resistors. I unplug them at night but there was an electrical storm during the day and I rather stupidly didn't unplug. Two extension leads were hit, one completely blown, the other just damaged one socket, the one leading to the desktop. It could have been a doh! moment.

So the surge protected extension leads did the job?

[Phil.]

My desktop is connected to a UPS and that saved it from our lightening strike. The UPS was fine too. Both were switched on at the time of the strike.

My son’s gaming PC was off but connected to the power supply and it was this one that fried its graphics card and one of the two monitors.