Does Ethernet surge conflict with Bonding/Aggregation/dual link?

[Anonymous user]

I have a Synology nas box that has 4 gigabit ports exporting data.  Recently my house was hit with a surge and many of the electronics in my house either completely fried, had their ethernet port destroyed, or another component burned.  Luckily my synology box only seemed to have port 1 affected as it will only recognize as a 10 MP/s port and not a gigabit port (synology is replacing the unit).  

Since almost all of the computers in my house/office were connected to some form of surge protection, I've come to the conclusion that most of the damage was done by the surge entering into the network in some way, some random computer or a device plugged into the wall and into a cat5 cable (security camera, laptop, etc).  

I don't know much about bonding or aggregating the 4 ethernet ports coming out of my synology box but apparently I can link them altogether so they will supply more bandwidth to my 24 port switch that supports LACP and aggregation (lots of terms here to learn).  Since the data on my NAS is the absolute most important thing in my entire house, I thought it would be a great idea to install 4 APC ProtectNet Surge Protectors on each one of the ports leading to my master 24 port switch where all my workstations are plugged into.  

My question is this, will the APC ethernet surge protector break the necessary communication between the nas and switch or does it act simply as a pass through for all 4 ports?  I don't know the specifics on how IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic Link Aggregation and Adaptive Load Balancing works but since the router needs to support it I don't want to screw that link up by placing these surge protectors between each port.  Thoughts?

[Anonymous user]

The APC Ethernet surge protectors are passive devices. They won't influence the Ethernet signal going through them.

However, my suggestion would be to place them between your means of connection to the Internet (cable modem, DSL, whatever) and your router. Also, be sure they're properly grounded, or their effectiveness will be very limited. If your router and means of connectivity are part of the same device, a different type of surge protector may be in order.

[BillP]

I thought all ethernet ports were transformer-isolated by design... so how would a surge pass through? This is a genuine question, just trying to understand...

Second question, if your internet connection is optical fiber, presumably this is not needed?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Ben,

On 8/31/2016 1:41 AM, Ben said:

I thought all ethernet ports were transformer-isolated by design... so how would a surge pass through? This is a genuine question, just trying to understand...

We have a White paper on the subject http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/SADE-5TNRN6/SADE-5TNRN6_R1_EN.pdf?sdirect=true

On 8/31/2016 1:41 AM, Ben said:

Second question, if your internet connection is optical fiber, presumably this is not needed?

Correct. Since there is only light transferred and no voltage.