Showing posts with label lightning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lightning. Show all posts

Monday, August 27, 2012

ITW Linx CAT6-LAN Building Entrance Protector from Surge and Lightning

Because there are many causes of electrical surges that can originate outside your building, proper surge protection for your equipment is a must. Surges occur when large electrical loads are turned on and off, at a local factory or from your utility company and the most damaging source is lightning.


The CAT6-LAN by ITW Linx will protect your equipment and high performance 4-pair Category 6 outside plant cable and also Cat6 UTP cables for LAN/Data applications.

Let's take a look at this product from our YouTube Channel



Still thinking about whether or not you need a CAT6-LAN? Check this out.

* Excess current can enter into almost all items in the subsystem such as power sources, peripherals, networks and telephone cables.

* Excess current can damage and destroy vital items in your subsystem such as silicon items, magnetic media and circuit board traces.

* Computer and telephone subsystems are usually assembled out of components from different manufactures and because of that you now have equipment that handles power and grounding in different ways.

* Copper cables are vulnerable from outside the building to breakage, crosses, lightning and those cables lead back to you.

Another question is who's responsible for providing primary and secondary protection? The regulated telephone company is only responsible for providing a standard level of primary protection connected to the customers premise. That level of protection is designed to prevent building wiring from catching fire and not designed to protect equipment. All other protection is the responsibility of the equipment user.

Now that your sold on the CAT6-LAN here's a common cable that is installed for outside plant building applications.



Don't forget about grounding! Check out a previous blog post for tips on grounding telephone and data cables and you can order all these parts at Discount Low Voltage

If you have any questions comment below! Thanks!

"By Mercy Salinas"

Friday, July 20, 2012

Tips for Grounding Telephone Wire and Data Cable

We're going to talk about grounding but remember to select the proper protection for your equipment. Once selected the next step is making sure everything is grounded correctly.


Tip 1: Bonding - Bond or electrically connect together at a single point all of the grounds used for protectors. Typical grounds used for protectors are metal water pipes, grounding rods, well casings, chemical rods, etc. (Double check local building codes for options as local building codes do vary) The communications equipment is typically connected to the power companies multi-grounded neutral (MGN) system and is the best source for a single point ground. Connect the protector (primary and secondary) and cable shield grounds to the equipment grounds (i.e. Multi-Grounded Neutral) with a six AWG solid copper bonding wire.

Tip 2: Physical Connectors - Make sure to use the recommended ground wire size and UL listed ground wire connections. Any ground wire longer than 60 feet in length the next largest wire gauge should be installed. Use a large radius at each bend in the ground wire. DON'T coil the ground wire under any circumstances. Coil wire can act as an inductor that dramatically increase the resistance of the path to ground, jeopardizing the effectiveness of over-voltage devices.

Tip 3: Check Ground System Impedance - There are numerous brands of equipment and methods for checking the integrity of a grounding system. Pick one that test both continuity and the impedance (total resistance) with respect to a true ground. And ideal ground should have an impedance under .250 ohms.

Tip 4: Cable Shields - The metal cable shield should be bonded to the protector/ground systems on both ends of the cable.


Tip 5: Unused Cable Pairs - They must be grounded on the unprotected side of the protector.

Tip 6: Campus Building - Treat each building independently. Do all of these tips in each building.


The effectiveness of all over-voltage protectors relies in a path of least resistance for "dumping" transient voltages. The higher the resistance to ground the higher the true activation level is for a protector and the lower the better.

Special thanks to ITW Linx and you can order burial cable, lightning protection and everything else for your installation at Discount Low Voltage

(We do ship to 40 countries)


"By Mercy Salinas"