[Cube] I joined with a dead cube.

[Dan Oetting]

On May 27, 2005, at 4:30 PM, Morning, A.J. wrote:

> A very cheap and easy safeguard is simply to tie the phone
> line (where it comes out of the wall) into a knot.

It works best when the other end of the line is in the center of the  
knot and not connected to your computer :)

Although tying a knot in the phone line sounds like some kind of  
voodoo magic there is actually legitimate reasoning behind it. The  
knot forms an inductor that blocks high frequency signals such as the  
majority of a spike caused by a lightning strike. Better would be 3  
or 4 wraps around a ferrite or old transformer core. Best is to use a  
wireless network so the computer never touches the phone lines.

If you took major damage from a spike coming through the phone line I  
would suspect there is a problem with the protection circuits at the  
pole or where the line enters the house. There should be one common  
point where all external wiring is tied to the earth ground before it  
enters the house. Your phone line should have a surge arrestor  
connected to the ground at this point. The single common ground is to  
prevent a lightning strike from entering on one service and leaving  
on another.

Your computer setup should also have a single common ground point.  
Every wire coming into the computer system should have a surge  
suppressor connected to this ground point and this ground point then  
tied to the house wiring ground. The easiest way to accomplish this  
is by using a multi-media surge suppressor/outlet strip. Every  
peripheral that is part of this system should be plugged into the  
same outlet. Running extension cords to other outlets can increase  
your risk although overloading a single outlet is bad too.

-- Dan O.