[Techtalk] Networking options

[Meredydd Luff]

Reminds me of an anecdote I heard about the early Cambridge University comp 
dept. They had just made a site-wide installation of this new-fangled 
Ethernet thing - a real prestige project, which culminated in this LARGE 
copper backbone running the ~3 m gap between two buildings. Right after it 
was installed, lightning struck nearby (or was it actually on the building?) 
- induced current, fried EVERYTHING on the network. Cue a lot of unhappy 
compsci students & teachers...

Meredydd

On Monday 18 November 2002 00:59, Maria Blackmore wrote:
> > Am I missing something here?  I would have thought that UTP (that's
> > *unshielded*) cable running over the roof would be just *asking* for a
> > lightening strike!
>
> If you have a strike to your house, you're screwed anyway, the lightning
> has just travelled how many hundreds of yards through the air to reach
> your house, i don't think anything is about to stop it.  At that kind of
> voltage, even wood conducts (albeit for a very short time, until it
> undergoes massive heating and explosive expansion).
> A nearby strike would create problems with induced voltages, however no
> matter what you do it will be induced in the mains supply wiring and water
> system in the house anyway, and at this point you're going to be picking
> bits of home appliances out of the walls anyway.
> Not that this has anything to do with getting cables from one point to
> another ...
> I think what's required is a little imagination
> Maria
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