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How to Protect a Network Against Lightning?
RichiH asks: "The monsoon, started about a month early in India this year. While it is not sure if that is due to global warming or not, there are more pressing issues for the IT world at hand. Until about the end of July, there will be major thunderstorms in this area. How do you protect a network that is spread over 100 square kilometres in a land where the concept of a lightening arrestor is next to unknown? The network in question consists of about 2500 boxes of various kinds which are connected using 10BASE2 (aka BNC), 10BASE-T (aka RJ45) and 10BASE5 (aka thicknet), where only the last one may be new to some readers. The big question is: how can you protect yourself against these storms in a way that is both fast to implement and does not require laying of new lines?"
During monsoon season, outsource your IT operations to the United States.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
You're in India, you say?
Actually, the safest way to protect your equipment against lightning strikes is wire a lightning rod directly into your network's central switch. The extra voltage and current from the lighting will safely disperse through all the attached systems, and you may even notice an increase in performance!
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
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euh... shouldn't you have thought of that before?
Like, you know, at the time of installing the network?
just asking, what do I know about stuff like this...
How to pray
IIRC Protection from Lightning is a 4th level Cleric spell!
Geeks these days...
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
"How to protect your electronic devices against lightnings. A research paper by Angus Ingrid, University of Technology Berlin".
Here is an extract from the concluding part:
"After carefull research we are now convinced that the solution to the problem was: roof."
I know a lot of Slashdot readers are pretty young, but wow... 10BASE5 (thicknet) being new or unheard of... makes me feel OLD (and I'm only 30!)
ahh yes my friend you see it very simple really when you think about it. you could outsource to somewhere like Florida or Boston.
/. what's next on this goddamn forum?
come on
"excuse me but we in bangladesh were wondering if you could ever so kindly sho us how to do a hip replacement?
Just pile human bodies over top of all the physical lines. They attract lightning and absorb all the damage. Besides, if Indians are willing to work under inhumane conditions in call centers for pennies an hour, they'd probably be willing to do this for a few cents more, right?
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
You will be happy to know that I just called my favorite tech support line and spoke to someone in India. I had trouble understanding everything he said, but I did catch his name: "Jimmy."
Jimmy worked with me for about 30 minutes on the question of protecting computers from lightning and then passed the call on to his supervisor, "Susan", who also had a very thick accent. According to what I was told by Susan and Jimmy, all one has to do in the case of a lightning strike is type about 40 commands starting with "ipconfig" and ending with "path." If there is no response to any of the commands, the answer is to unplug the computer, wait two minutes, and then plug it back in again.
Surprisingly, that's the same answer I've received from them for everything from a dead cable modem connection to RAM parity errors...
I guess that just depends on if you think the moderators are allowed to partake in these types of jokes. If you think moderation is 100% serious and it was an inappropriate use of moderator points then mark it unfair. If you can't decide mark it no opinion, and if you think it was funny then mark it fair. I personally thought it was funny and would probably mark it as a fair moderation, but that's just me.