Protecting your WiFi system from power surges
Your WiFi system, like any electronic device, can be damaged by power surges or even nearby lightning strikes, causing damage and potential down time. It may not be possible to completely eliminate the risk of damage from a surge, but it is easy to significantly reduce the chances of damage.
First let’s understand the different ways that surges get into your system. Surges can come in:
- Through the power supply
- Through the Internet connection
- Through a wired connection to an access point or another device
- A direct hit of lightning (very rare)
Your WiFi controller sits at the crossroads of your system, with connections to power, connections to the Internet and connections to your access points. It is exposed to potential surges from many directions.
A surge can travel along an electrical or Internet connection but may not affect all devices equally. For example, a lightning strike near a power line can induce a surge that travels down the line, into your office and affecting the credit card machine, a router and WiFi, but your PC and security cameras might fine. That same surge may come in through the cable or DSL line and only some devices appear affected.
(Fiber connections do not conduct surges as the plastic and glass fibers don’t conduct electricity. However, fiber modems can de damaged by surges from power connections or Ethernet connections from other equipment.)
Surges can also come through the Ethernet connections between interconnected devices. For example, a surge could come into your office from the utility power and your WiFi controller is safely connected to a surge suppressor that does its job. However the WiFi controller is also connected via an Ethernet cable going out to an access point on the roof which creates be an additional path for a damaging surge to get back to the controller.
Sometimes the damage is obvious with equipment that suddenly stops working or in severe cases you will see scorch marks on connections or smell burning.
More often the damage is less noticeable, not showing up immediately, and often leads to premature failure or reduced performance.
Protection for your WiFi system should include protecting all connections coming into and out of the controller, including power, the Internet connections and wired connections to access points.
The easiest way to do this is to purchase a surge suppressing power strip that includes connections not just for power but also RJ45 Ethernet connections for your wired access points and connections for coax (for cable modems) or RJ11 (for DSL lines).
You can also use a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) that has a built-in surge suppressor with all of the connections.
- Plug the power connections for your WiFi controller, the modem, the access points and any device that connects to your WiFi controller into the surge suppressor power strip.
- Connect the coax for your cable modem to the power strip’s coax connectors or the phone lines feeding your DSL modem to the RJ11 (telephone) jacks on the surge suppressor power strip.
- Connect the network cable going out to your wired access points to the RJ45 (Ethernet) connectors on the surge suppressor outlet strip.
The surge suppressing abilities of a surge suppressor can fail after absorbing one big or several smaller spikes. When the protection fails the surge suppressor will keep functioning as a plain old outlet strip, but you will lose any protection. Most better surge suppressors have an indicator light that will either tell you protection is working or that protection has failed. It is a good idea to check these indicator lights periodically.
You can also protect remote access points with surge suppressors. These will not protect against close lightning strikes but will prevent damage from many powerline surges.
Investing in some good surge protection can save the costs of replacing more expensive equipment and the cost of downtime.