On Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 8:13:40 PM UTC-5, westom wrote:
On Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 9:25:36 AM UTC-4, Uncle Monster wrote:
http://www.sandman.com/surge.html

The type I installed the most was the type in the link below. It will take industry standard plugin fuse modules of different types. The modules can be gas tube or solid state arresters. The plug in fuses are at the bottom of the page. ^_^

http://www.discount-low-voltage.com/...ks/CR-2606QCQC

http://tinyurl.com/osl3u4r

Those protectors have what makes them effective - a connection for a 6 to 14 AWG ground wire. Then the surge is harmlessly absorbed in earth.

An AT&T forum also discusses this protection in [quote] "How can I protect my DSL/dialup equipment from surges?". It also defined what is most critically important for protection - earth ground:
Surge protection for DSL and dialup service.
Surge protection takes on many forms, but always
involves the following components: Grounding
bonding and surge protectors. ...
Grounding is required to provide the surge
protector with a path to dump the excess energy
to earth. A proper ground system is a mandatory
requirement of surge protection. Without a proper
ground, a surge protector has no way to disburse
the excess energy and will fail to protect
downstream equipment.
Bonding is required to electrically connect together
the various grounds of the services entering the
premises. Without bonding, a surge may still enter
a premise after firing over a surge protector, which
will attempt to pass the excess energy to its ground
with any additional energy that the services surge
protector ground cannot instantly handle, traveling
into and through protected equipment, damaging
that equipment in the process. ...
Now, if all the various service entrance grounds are
bonded together there are no additional paths to
ground through the premise. Even if all of the
grounds cannot instantly absorb the energy, the lack
of additional paths to ground through the premise
prevents the excess energy from seeking out any
additional grounds through that premise and the
electronic equipment within. As such, the excess
energy remains in the ground system until
dissipated, sparing the protected equipment
from damage. ...
By far, the whole house hardwired surge protectors
provide the best protection. When a whole house
primary surge protector is installed at the service
entrance, it will provide a solid first line of
defense against surges which enter from the power
company's service entrance feed. These types of
protectors can absorb/pass considerably more energy
than any other type of protector, and if one does
catastrophically fail, it will not typically be in
a living space. ...
Plug in strip protectors are, at best, a compromise.
At worst, they may cause more damage than they
prevent. While they may do an acceptable job of
handling hot to neutral surges, they do a poor job
of handling any surge that must be passed to
ground. ...
Then, to add insult to injury, some strip protectors
add Telco and/or LAN surge protection within the
same device, trying to be an all-in-one sale.
Remember bonding? When Telco or LAN protection is
added to a strip protector, if the premise ground,
which is not designed to handle surges, cannot
handle all of the energy, guess where that excess
energy seeks out the additional grounds? You got
it! The Telco and LAN connections now becomes
the path, with disastrous results to those
devices. ...

What I like about them is that plugin modules fail "open" and and spares left on sight often in unused connections can get a system back on line immediately. No tools needed. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Plug Monster