Post-Thunderstorm HelpDesk
Credit to Claire Thomson.
We had some spectacular thunderstorms in Glasgow last night. Usually when there is a thunderstorm you can see it coming, experience it for 20 minutes, and then watch it leave. Last night’s was much larger - it lasted between 8pm and midnight, and covered the entire sky over Glasgow. There was both forked and sheet lightning, and some torrential rain. I was speaking to a taxi driver today who saw manhole covers being lifted above the road level by the force of the water.
Some very spectacular pictures in Flickr and on the BBC website.
Anyway, this leads me to the main topic of this post:
As we were out during the storm I had left all my kit plugged in and turned on. When we returned my broadband was down, although the ADSL router seemed to be working fine, it was just not connecting. I thought I’d leave it, maybe BT were out fixing it, so I turned off the router and the PC. This morning, still no connection, and none when I got home from work either.
So I call BT Broadband Technical Support (0845 600 7030) and I get through to a guy in India. After confirming all my details, he asked me to:
- Turn off my router
- Unplug all the cables (power, telephone, ethernet, USB)
- Wait 30 seconds
- Plug in all the cables and turn on the router
And it worked!. Immediately!
I asked the guy why this might make a difference. He said that turning the router off and unplugging all the cables discharges all the static electricity that may have built up during the thunderstorm - particularly in the cable that connects to the telephone line.
I found the engineer really helpful - and it’s not often I say that!
Glad it worked, but unless the static had built up in the insulation I can’t see how your cables could be charged. You can’t charge a conductor. So unplugging them should also have made no difference. Any static charge in the insulation should have leaked away in the day since the storm anyway.
Perhaps there was some corruption of some chip in the router that needed to be properly switched off to be fixed - I guess the current in a phone cable was enough to keep it there?
I’ve been googling to try to find out why this should happen, but with no luck. Your explanation is as good as any. My knowledge of electronics is finite.
Mmmm. Bet you know more about it than I do. Just think the explanation was interesting - on the lines of ‘Bad Science’ in the Guardian. Like a lot of these things it doesn’t matter as long as it worked.
See this thread (esp the last item).