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Today's data equipment has become extremely vulnerable to voltage surges and transients. A single IC package can contain over 100,000 memory bits and more than 5,000 logic gates. The high sensitivity of the chips used in these packages makes them prone to fast degradation due to voltage surges. Their small size has considerably lowered their failure threshold The consequence of an electrical surge may be severe; burnt lines cards, lockups, loss of memory, problems in retrieving data, altered data, garbling...etc. All these unfavorable effects are often overlooked by the user who will first think of a hardware problem or maybe of a power related problem. Power lines are generally well understood as a source of transients and often the backdoor of communication lines is forgotten. Any equipment can be considered as having a circle around it which can be broken in two ways, through the power line or through the communication line (telephone line, coaxial line, RS232 line, RS 422, RS485, RS423, and 4-20 mA current loop cables. Sources of electrical surges are numerous. The most common is a nearby lightning strike, which will affect nearby data lines through induction. Industrial transients are also significant. They are man made disturbances caused by switching and commuting of electrical motors. Communication line surge protection has been overlooked for a long time and cannot be ignored any longer. To properly protect your home and equipment you need to have technician check all possible points of risk and recommend the best course to protect your data.
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