Belkin fried in storm?

Or has it.

Let me describe the setup, and the symptoms

Setup
=====

New installation using rather old router - Belkin wireless, ADSL 2+
with a Macbook, Laptop PEECEE and an Eposn WiFi printer wirelessly
connected. Urban small office.

Symptoms
========
Got phone call 'internet and printer not working.
Tried to access router from home, no response.
Rebooted router, and then could see it.
Storms had upset BT's backhaul, so might have been that.

I'd also change some settings to suit teh MacBook, so PeeCee wouldnt
connect until we rejigged security settings. Printer still no go.

Went in, and whilst macbook reports decent signal strength (insofar as a
Macbook reports anything other than 'its OK' or 'its fucked') PC reports
a weaker signal from a router 2 ft away that from other wireless
networks across the road, Ho Hum.

Printer works fine on wired, absolutely sweet Fanny Adams on WiFi,
though its only 2ft from router. Reports other wifi networks detected,
but not this one.

Tried every combination in the book. Sometimes the green WiFi light
would come on, but never could establish decent connectivity.

Now I finally decided to swap out the Belkin, as my mate also had one
quit on him post a storm. So I may be biased.

Anyone else had these things crap out this way before?

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:11:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Or has it.
>
> Let me describe the setup, and the symptoms
>
> Setup
> =====
>
> New installation using rather old router - Belkin wireless, ADSL 2+ with
> a Macbook, Laptop PEECEE and an Eposn WiFi printer wirelessly connected.
> Urban small office.
>
> Symptoms
> ========
> Got phone call 'internet and printer not working. Tried to access router
> from home, no response. Rebooted router, and then could see it. Storms
> had upset BT's backhaul, so might have been that.
>
> I'd also change some settings to suit teh MacBook, so PeeCee wouldnt
> connect until we rejigged security settings. Printer still no go.
>
> Went in, and whilst macbook reports decent signal strength (insofar as a
> Macbook reports anything other than 'its OK' or 'its fucked') PC reports
> a weaker signal from a router 2 ft away that from other wireless
> networks across the road, Ho Hum.
>
> Printer works fine on wired, absolutely sweet Fanny Adams on WiFi,
> though its only 2ft from router. Reports other wifi networks detected,
> but not this one.
>
> Tried every combination in the book. Sometimes the green WiFi light
> would come on, but never could establish decent connectivity.
>
> Now I finally decided to swap out the Belkin, as my mate also had one
> quit on him post a storm. So I may be biased.
>
> Anyone else had these things crap out this way before?
I have - I hate to say. A good crack of thunder and a strike in the same
exchange area can have effects across town. Normally it pops the
discharge tube in the back of the master socket (this can fail open or
short). A really local strike can blow the sockets out of the wall;

http://www.buzzhost.co.uk/telcopictures/lightdamage.jpg

After wiping out the NTE, it then often wipes out the modem part of the
device - be it Belkin, Linksys or Netgear. What is unusual in your case
is the loss of wireless too.

I've known it spread through the whole house and take all the phones,
filters and sockets with it - just to be the prophet of doom.

That said, I've seen it take out the entire exchange DSLAM and there be
no fault on the customer end.

Summary - probably very responsible, but don't write it off until you
prove service at the master with a known working DSL modem of some kind.

R Johnson wrote:

>> Anyone else had these things crap out this way before?
> I have - I hate to say. A good crack of thunder and a strike in the same
> exchange area can have effects across town. Normally it pops the
> discharge tube in the back of the master socket (this can fail open or
> short). A really local strike can blow the sockets out of the wall;

> http://www.buzzhost.co.uk/telcopictures/lightdamage.jpg

Yes, a friend this week had a strike in his road.

It melted his TV aerial and downlead, toasted the tuners in two of his TV
sets, killed his gas boiler's control card, and killed his Netgear 834 router.
His phone line is completely dead, I suspect the surge arrester in his master
socket has gone s/c, but perhaps the overhead line is also damaged. BT were
due today to take a look. I opened up the Netgear to perform a post mortem.
There were a collection of burnt components next to the DC input socket, not
as I was expecting near the RJ11 input socket. It's all chaos theory as to
what and where the current flows, but I'd say he's got off very lightly, as
the picture you link to indicates.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:43:06 +0100, Mark Carver wrote:

> R Johnson wrote:
>
>>> Anyone else had these things crap out this way before?
>> I have - I hate to say. A good crack of thunder and a strike in the
>> same exchange area can have effects across town. Normally it pops the
>> discharge tube in the back of the master socket (this can fail open or
>> short). A really local strike can blow the sockets out of the wall;
>
> > http://www.buzzhost.co.uk/telcopictures/lightdamage.jpg
>
> Yes, a friend this week had a strike in his road.
>
> It melted his TV aerial and downlead, toasted the tuners in two of his
> TV sets, killed his gas boiler's control card, and killed his Netgear
> 834 router. His phone line is completely dead, I suspect the surge
> arrester in his master socket has gone s/c, but perhaps the overhead
> line is also damaged. BT were due today to take a look. I opened up the
> Netgear to perform a post mortem. There were a collection of burnt
> components next to the DC input socket, not as I was expecting near the
> RJ11 input socket. It's all chaos theory as to what and where the
> current flows, but I'd say he's got off very lightly, as the picture you
> link to indicates.

It's probably near the power socket because it was looking for a path to
earth. If you have a switched mode supply it may find the neutral and be
happy with the PD. If not and Worse case, it would have a good go at
tracking along any RJ45 leads looking for one. Subject to insufficient
opto isolaton (or none).

R Johnson wrote:

>
> It's probably near the power socket because it was looking for a path to
> earth. If you have a switched mode supply it may find the neutral and be
> happy with the PD. If not and Worse case, it would have a good go at
> tracking along any RJ45 leads looking for one. Subject to insufficient
> opto isolaton (or none).

The PSU, a linear one I think, still works, but has quite high ripple. That
was the only other device plugged in, the router was being used purely as a
WiFi device, no ethernet connections at all, so as you say it tried to find a
route to earth via the PSU.

I've told my friend that once the insurance company have finished with the
affair to ditch the PSU as well. I'll ask him to give me the ADSL filter,
that'll be interesting to examine too. His ISP (TalkTalk) are sending him a
new router FOC anyway.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

R Johnson wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:11:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> Or has it.
>>
>> Let me describe the setup, and the symptoms
>>
>> Setup
>> =====
>>
>> New installation using rather old router - Belkin wireless, ADSL 2+ with
>> a Macbook, Laptop PEECEE and an Eposn WiFi printer wirelessly connected.
>> Urban small office.
>>
>> Symptoms
>> ========
>> Got phone call 'internet and printer not working. Tried to access router
>> from home, no response. Rebooted router, and then could see it. Storms
>> had upset BT's backhaul, so might have been that.
>>
>> I'd also change some settings to suit teh MacBook, so PeeCee wouldnt
>> connect until we rejigged security settings. Printer still no go.
>>
>> Went in, and whilst macbook reports decent signal strength (insofar as a
>> Macbook reports anything other than 'its OK' or 'its fucked') PC reports
>> a weaker signal from a router 2 ft away that from other wireless
>> networks across the road, Ho Hum.
>>
>> Printer works fine on wired, absolutely sweet Fanny Adams on WiFi,
>> though its only 2ft from router. Reports other wifi networks detected,
>> but not this one.
>>
>> Tried every combination in the book. Sometimes the green WiFi light
>> would come on, but never could establish decent connectivity.
>>
>> Now I finally decided to swap out the Belkin, as my mate also had one
>> quit on him post a storm. So I may be biased.
>>
>> Anyone else had these things crap out this way before?
> I have - I hate to say. A good crack of thunder and a strike in the same
> exchange area can have effects across town. Normally it pops the
> discharge tube in the back of the master socket (this can fail open or
> short). A really local strike can blow the sockets out of the wall;
>
> http://www.buzzhost.co.uk/telcopictures/lightdamage.jpg
>
> After wiping out the NTE, it then often wipes out the modem part of the
> device - be it Belkin, Linksys or Netgear. What is unusual in your case
> is the loss of wireless too.
>
> I've known it spread through the whole house and take all the phones,
> filters and sockets with it - just to be the prophet of doom.
>
> That said, I've seen it take out the entire exchange DSLAM and there be
> no fault on the customer end.
>
> Summary - probably very responsible, but don't write it off until you
> prove service at the master with a known working DSL modem of some kind.

Well the ODD thing is its the WiFi that seems to have gone..low power.
Everything else works after a reboot.

Anyway spare Belkin configured to be installed whenever I get a round tuit..

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:11:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Or has it.
>
>Let me describe the setup, and the symptoms
>
>Setup
>=====
>
>New installation using rather old router - Belkin wireless, ADSL 2+
>with a Macbook, Laptop PEECEE and an Eposn WiFi printer wirelessly
>connected. Urban small office.
>
>Symptoms
>========
>Got phone call 'internet and printer not working.
>Tried to access router from home, no response.
>Rebooted router, and then could see it.
>Storms had upset BT's backhaul, so might have been that.
>
>I'd also change some settings to suit teh MacBook, so PeeCee wouldnt
>connect until we rejigged security settings. Printer still no go.
>
>Went in, and whilst macbook reports decent signal strength (insofar as a
>Macbook reports anything other than 'its OK' or 'its fucked') PC reports
>a weaker signal from a router 2 ft away that from other wireless
>networks across the road, Ho Hum.
>
>Printer works fine on wired, absolutely sweet Fanny Adams on WiFi,
>though its only 2ft from router. Reports other wifi networks detected,
>but not this one.
>
>Tried every combination in the book. Sometimes the green WiFi light
>would come on, but never could establish decent connectivity.
>
>Now I finally decided to swap out the Belkin, as my mate also had one
>quit on him post a storm. So I may be biased.
>
>Anyone else had these things crap out this way before?
>
>

I lost a vigor router to a lightning strike a few weeks ago, along
with my microwave oven.

The computer was fine because it had surge protector sockets in use,
but the router was taken out via the phone line connection.

We also lost voice usage of the line for a couple of days ( from a
fault created away from the house), but still had broadband access
(using my spare 3Com router), albeit with much lower bandwidth than
normal.
--
Alex Heney, Global Villager
Microsoft gives you Windows... OS/2 gives you the whole house.
To reply by email, my address is alexATheneyDOTplusDOTcom

[snip]

> I lost a vigor router to a lightning strike a few weeks ago, along
> with my microwave oven.

SEG (supplier of Vigor) repaired a lightning damaged Vigor under their
3-year warranty for me - I was very chuffed!

--
Graham J

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:26:24 +0100, Peter Crosland wrote:

>> >I lost a vigor router to a lightning strike a few weeks ago, along
>>>with my microwave oven.
>>>
>>>The computer was fine because it had surge protector sockets in use,
>>>but the router was taken out via the phone line connection.
>>
>> I lost two vigor routers over the years, in spite of the fact that they
>> were both on surge arresters, and the telephone line was "protected"
>> via the surge arrester and all the PCs in the LAN were on surge
>> arresters or UPSs.
>>
>> I suspect that that the surge came through the LAN wiring (EMC?), since
>> in one case the NICs of a couple of PCs were also gone.
>
>
> Surge arresters provide little or no real protection against lightning
> strikes. In many cases the EMP induced by the huge currents passing in a
> close lightning strike which cause currents in electronic equipment
> directly. Apart from obvious damage indicated by charring of components
> there is often internal damage to integrated circuits than may not be
> immediately apparent.
>
> Peter Crosland

Coupled with most of the BT Network having had the protectors taken out
by engineers. This has not always been their fault as such - just obeying
orders. It's worth noting that the protection in the BT network is to
protect the BT network and equipment - not the CPE - a fact that is often
overlooked.

Peter Crosland wrote:
>>> I lost a vigor router to a lightning strike a few weeks ago, along
>>> with my microwave oven.
>>>
>>> The computer was fine because it had surge protector sockets in use,
>>> but the router was taken out via the phone line connection.
>> I lost two vigor routers over the years, in spite of the fact that
>> they were both on surge arresters, and the telephone line was
>> "protected" via the surge arrester and all the PCs in the LAN were on
>> surge arresters or UPSs.
>>
>> I suspect that that the surge came through the LAN wiring (EMC?),
>> since in one case the NICs of a couple of PCs were also gone.
>
>
> Surge arresters provide little or no real protection against lightning
> strikes. In many cases the EMP induced by the huge currents passing in a
> close lightning strike which cause currents in electronic equipment
> directly. Apart from obvious damage indicated by charring of components
> there is often internal damage to integrated circuits than may not be
> immediately apparent.
>
> Peter Crosland
>
>
Well it seems, after having substituted another belkin that probably HAD
been fried in a storm: leastways it couldn't hold a connection to the
internet, but the radio bit worked, that actually its the Epson printer
WiFi that is fannied.

Couldn't seen any of the networks today.