On 10/10/06 13:40, Felix Miata wrote:
On 06/10/10 14:16 (GMT-0500) Greg Wallace apparently typed:
I've just lost my router. There was a power outage here and the power went on and off 2 or three times. Apparently, that did in my router, even though it was behind a surge protector.
Common surge supressors are mickey mouse junk that need to be replace every 6 months or so. The surge supression built into a UPS is much more reliable. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/surge-protector.htm. This seems to be a rather unapologetic advert for Belkin, but it is nevertheless a good quick reference. AFAIAC, though, on the North American power grid, you need the following levels of protection (I agree with howstuffworks only on the response time):
minimum 1300 joules total power dissipation clamping voltage not exceeding 250 volts 1 nanosecond response time gas discharge tube is essential, to give protection against persistent transients (ie. that last longer than 0.1 seconds, and believe me, on the NA grid, you can see some rather wild stuff for a lot longer than that :-) ). I won't venture a guess on what might be needed on the European power grid, which, IIRC, operates on 220V. Another point is protection of inputs other than the power grid: phone lines, network links, even a TV cable, all of these can be sources of power surges that will destroy your equipment. It is possible, for example, that Greg's router was done in by a spike on the network link rather than the house current. Any decent protector should have coax as well as phone and/or network plugs. I am not convinced that any UPS at all offers acceptable surge protection. Most people don't even bother to look beyond the capacity of the storage battery, and I doubt that your average $50-$75 UPS will give you anywhere near the levels of surge protection I consider adequate (a surge protector alone with that capability can cost the same as, or more than, the least expensive UPS units). howstuffworks.com hints that one might also want to put a surge-only unit in front of the UPS itself. If you have a combination surge/UPS unit that gives adequate protection, it might fail as it protects your electronics, leaving you with some expensive, but useless, dead weight. This also gives you the option of plugging non-essential equipment into something other than the UPS itself, while still protecting all your equipment.