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Being slightly paranoid, I wish to use a Ethernet surge protector to protect the Coax->Modem->Ethernet side of my computer network if there is a surge on the Coax line. Almost all of these ethernet surge protectors have a pigtail that you are supposed to hook up to ground, and APC demonstrates this by using the computer case the ethernet cable is being plugged into as the ground. An example image here:

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My question is, if the mains power powering the computer is going through a surge protector, should this still be grounded to the case (or any other ground point past the surge protector), or should it be grounded directly to ground?

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  • I'm no electrical engineer, but thinking about this logically I can't find a reason that the ground from the surge protector would be less safe. It should just go directly from the plugs on the surge protector to the wall ground.
    – At0micMutex
    Commented Jun 8, 2022 at 6:01
  • That APC device looks like snake-oil to me. If you use Cat5 for PoE, then maybe it has a valid use case, but for regular LAN use, it's not necessary to use one of these. IMHO.
    – spikey_richie
    Commented Jun 8, 2022 at 7:07
  • @spikey_richie I've found anecdotes of lightning strikes coming it via coax, blowing out cable modem, the router behind the cable modem, and computers connected to said router. After some more research I've come to the conclusion the correct way to protect against this is lightning-rated coax surge protection, and if that's not a possible, a media converter to go from ethernet<->fibre<->ethernet. The latter solution being cheap enough it's probably the best solution.
    – Chuu
    Commented Jul 21, 2022 at 13:36

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The surge protector should be secured to whatever you are grounding it to.

If APC recommends it and if the computer itself is well-grounded, then this might be possible.

However, I can't help being sceptique about the possible diversion of a power-surge to the computer that it's supposed to protect. I would prefer to connect it to a pipe or something that doesn't need electrical protection.

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