So, a week ago I found out that my excitel ethernet cable wasn't grounded and thus live. I also assumed this was the reason why 4 of my routers and one switch failed in a period of 3months.
Sushubh replied on the thread and said to get a ethernet surge protector but that costs around Rs. 1300 on Amazon. I will still get the surge protector as simply grounding the cable won't protect it from lightning strikes but it'll prevent any frying of the networking equipment.
NOTE: I would still suggest getting the surge protector as it is a way more professional option but if you don't have money, you can do this as a temp solution.
Prerequisite:
1. A Keystone jack and box (not required but still better to have because you can just directly punchdown the ground rather than twisting it directly to the wire)
2. A scissor or wire stripper.
3. A piece of wire long enough to reach where the grounding rod in your house is. If your house has grounded outlets, then good, just connect it to that but most power outlets in India and other developing countries are not grounded so you'll need to find some other object that is grounded. Metal pipes that go underground is a good ground.
4. A tester or multimeter to check grounding.
What will you need to do:
1. Find a ground in your home (grounded outlets, underground metal water pipes, grounding rod etc)
I found out that my coaxial line from Den is properly grounded and very close to my excitel line so what I did is I put some aluminum foil between copper core and connector of the coax cable and used that as a ground( Ikr, extremely unprofessional but itll do for now)
2. Strip down the Excitel ethernet cable by 4cm or so and expose a bit of wires (this can cause interference and crosstalk in the cable but as the speeds are only 10/100, it shouldn't make a big difference), just strip a bit of any color wire that is red or green, as Excitel only uses these two pairs. ONLY STRIP A BIT OF THE WIRE INSIDE AS IT WILL CORRODE IF LEFT IN AIR.
The reason why the Excitel wire is live is because current is leaking into the Excitel/LCOs wiring. If you ground all 4 wires then the ethernet wire itself will short out. What you are doing here is proving the leaking power somewhere to go without much resistance,only a single wire is enough to ground the entire cable.
Alternatively, if you have a Keystone jack you can just punch down another strand of cat5e on top of the Excitel wiring and ground that instead. See pics attached.
4. Connect the grounding wire to the single wire you just exposed before and connect it to the ground.
That is it, just wind some tape around the joints to prevent instant corrosion.
Speeds not at all seems to be affected by this but if you have a Gigabit ethernet then it may have an affect.
This is a extremely ghetto way to ground a cable and Excitel or lco should really be grounding their infrastructure themselves but they don't so you will have to do it.
Sushubh replied on the thread and said to get a ethernet surge protector but that costs around Rs. 1300 on Amazon. I will still get the surge protector as simply grounding the cable won't protect it from lightning strikes but it'll prevent any frying of the networking equipment.
NOTE: I would still suggest getting the surge protector as it is a way more professional option but if you don't have money, you can do this as a temp solution.
Prerequisite:
1. A Keystone jack and box (not required but still better to have because you can just directly punchdown the ground rather than twisting it directly to the wire)
2. A scissor or wire stripper.
3. A piece of wire long enough to reach where the grounding rod in your house is. If your house has grounded outlets, then good, just connect it to that but most power outlets in India and other developing countries are not grounded so you'll need to find some other object that is grounded. Metal pipes that go underground is a good ground.
4. A tester or multimeter to check grounding.
What will you need to do:
1. Find a ground in your home (grounded outlets, underground metal water pipes, grounding rod etc)
I found out that my coaxial line from Den is properly grounded and very close to my excitel line so what I did is I put some aluminum foil between copper core and connector of the coax cable and used that as a ground( Ikr, extremely unprofessional but itll do for now)
2. Strip down the Excitel ethernet cable by 4cm or so and expose a bit of wires (this can cause interference and crosstalk in the cable but as the speeds are only 10/100, it shouldn't make a big difference), just strip a bit of any color wire that is red or green, as Excitel only uses these two pairs. ONLY STRIP A BIT OF THE WIRE INSIDE AS IT WILL CORRODE IF LEFT IN AIR.
The reason why the Excitel wire is live is because current is leaking into the Excitel/LCOs wiring. If you ground all 4 wires then the ethernet wire itself will short out. What you are doing here is proving the leaking power somewhere to go without much resistance,only a single wire is enough to ground the entire cable.
Alternatively, if you have a Keystone jack you can just punch down another strand of cat5e on top of the Excitel wiring and ground that instead. See pics attached.
4. Connect the grounding wire to the single wire you just exposed before and connect it to the ground.
That is it, just wind some tape around the joints to prevent instant corrosion.
Speeds not at all seems to be affected by this but if you have a Gigabit ethernet then it may have an affect.
This is a extremely ghetto way to ground a cable and Excitel or lco should really be grounding their infrastructure themselves but they don't so you will have to do it.
