now I've really done it., dead minitars everywhere Options

[clarence]

I finally got my adsl link working , and it was working fine until today. This is a strange set of events but I will see if I can explain them.
My friend with the adsl came over and said his router had stopped working. I tried to log into either of my minitars and could not. I plugged a good minitar in and could not log onto it either. I changed pc's and could log onto the known good minitar. using that pc I could not log onto either of my suspect minitars. I went on the roof and got the minitar. tried to connect to the good pc [the one with working nic] and it would not even register and has EXACTLY the same symptoms as my stuffed minitar from weeks ago. [lan light on all the time without cat cable plugged in] factory reset does nothing. Ok I thought I will go to my friends house and get that minitar from the roof. I got it and tried to connect to a good pc and EXACTLY the same symptoms as the other 2 stuffed minitars. The dlink 4 port router was also fried on ports 1 and 2. with a reset we finally got it working on ports 3 and 4, so at least he is running again.
so in a nutshell, within a few minutes, the router, two minitars and my nic all blew up at the same time. how a transmission from one minitar to another can fry another minitar is beyond me.
All I can think of is someone has somehow hacked into the wireless link and fried the system. unlesss there is a major issue with firmware 2.53 and bridge point to point settings.
I am maybe thinking there is was an issue with my nic, but that shouldnt fry the remote minitar and router.

HELP.
clarence

[serialmonkey]

You had any power spikes in your area ? Sounds like a power surge has shot through your gear if it's managed to arc and fry the switch and routers as well. Are you using power over ethernet ? Is all your gear grounded appropriatly ?

S.

[clarence]

I suspect you are right about the grounding. I am using poe and I got a static shock from the cat cable yesterday. I think it was atmospheric electrical activity that caused the problems rather than surges. I have managed to revive one minitar but can only log on with a crossover cable.
re grounding, what should be grounded apart from the antenna mast. should I run an extra ground lead from my pc case, and what about grounding the negative 12v side of the poe?
thanks.
btw, the nic in my pc blew up when it was switched off. pretty strange.

[serialmonkey]

Not that sounds like some pretty severe electricity shocking through the system then.

Afraid im not an expert on power-over-ethernet so I can't be much help with the grounding. Anyone else have some better info ?

S.

[clarence]

I have it all running again and have earthed both houses properly and negative side of poe.
I have left the firmware on my two spare minitars I am using at 2.39, and have 128 bit wep enabled. I am getting internet timeouts now, so I suspect it may have something to do with wep and 2.39.

[serialmonkey]

Any reason not to update to 2.53 ?

S.

[clarence]

I have upgraded to 2.53 and it was still slow. it turned out to be my dish elevation was too high. all is good again now.

[serialmonkey]

Excellent.

S.

[wileecotye]

i glad im not the only one this sort of crap happens to

[clarence]

well still all going strong uptime 7day:22h:38m:56s, internet is flying, my two fried minitars have been replaced under warranty and very quickly. (IMG:http://www.minitar.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) now I just have to stop my stupid amd 2600 processor from overheating.

[serialmonkey]

They got hit by lightning and you got them replaced under warranty ? You have a very understanding retailer :-)

S.

[clarence]

A couple of days ago we had a rather severe lightning storm [10 times worse than the last one] and all is still going strong, I am encouraged by this, but am still perplexed by the unusual static buildup that I experienced in the first storm. I assume that the extra earthing I did has corrected the problem, but I have been talking to other wifi techs in my area and they dont have any earthing on their setups at all apart from the grid. anyway, it is probably a good idea to make an independant earth for the mast and negative poe ; negative 12vdc is common with shielding on the coax feed, so I would take a wire from negative 12vdc and secure it to the mast and assure that the mast is earthed independantly from the grid;.I hammered a 1.5 metre galve star post 90% into the ground and soaked it thoroughly. I then used galve clothesline cable and bolted it to the post and mast, then painted the connections with rustproof paint. I am no expert on earthing and static ect but any feedback would be most appreciated.

[Jebz]

A couple of days ago we had a rather severe lightning storm [10 times worse than the last one] and all is still going strong,

I am no expert on earthing and static ect but any feedback would be most appreciated.

Have a look at -
http://www.darwinwireless.com/modules.php?...viewtopic&t=952
for a story on a recent lightning hit on a wireless setup.