jmcunx I live where most people leave in the winter to lived in Florida 😁
The router, a RockPro64, is powered by a switching wall wart plugged into a surge suppressor strip. The cable modem, also powered by a switching wall wart is not.
rvp I read a paper (seems like last but probably a quarter century ago) debunking the make-an-inductor-with-the-cable thing. It seems with lightning, it just bridges the inductor anyway.
I cannot locate the devices closer, they are about twenty-five feet apart. So the damage probably was caused by induction. I have a very tall vertical antenna connected to a 1950s transceiver which took no damage so I don't expect I had a direct strike or even ground current.
Once upon a time I made a living installing opto-isolators on long RS-232 lines to prevent lightning damage and that worked very well. I seem to remember using some for Ethernet, too, but that was in the 10-Base-T days. I probably can't afford a 1000-Base-T isolator for at home. But if the USB NIC is going to act like a fuse, that's not such a bad thing.
