AtomicInternet Archived News

Today at 3:25pm the GnomeCam captured what looks like hail falling in my yard. Shortly afterwards, the server went down. I came home to find my WGU624 Router with only the power and wireless link lights on (no LAN/WAN). I cycled the power and wound up with the exact same problem. Next I cycled the power on every computer component and noticed the router, cable modem and weather station were all extremely hot. I discovered the WAN port on the cable modem, LAN ports on the router and server, and the COM port on the weather station were all dead. The only thing I can think of that would cause this is a power surge of some type either from the SmartUPS backup or through the weather station anemometer (mounted on my roof). The UPS passed all diagnostics so my working theory is a static buildup above my roof discharged through my anemometer. From there it travelled to the weather station, through the COM port on my server, and out the LAN port to kill the router and cable modem. There is no evidence it was strong enough to melt or short circuit anything so evidently none of these ports take kindly to even a moderate power spike. Ironically there is an RJ45 power suppressor on the power strip I use for the server. The incoming weather station cable is an RJ45 jack so if I had run the incoming cable through this suppressor none of this would have happened. I thought a 75 minute UPS backup made my server impenetrable to power surges and didn't realize I have a lightning rod connected to the COM port on my server. Fortunatley the cable modem has a USB connection as well as the Ethernet port so the server is currently serving this page via USB. Consequently there is a direct connection between the cable modem and my server so take note hackers (Steve), now is the time to make your strike