Ethernet Surge (Score 2, Interesting)

I have a rather large home network, that starts from my Breezecom dish (I get wireless ISP service) and radio about 90 feet in the air, to my house, and then branches out to several buildings on our farm. One night, during a large storm, a surge originated between two of the buildings. It went down the Ethernet cable, and was stopped at the far end with an Ethernet surge suppressor. The other end wasn't protected at the time because I thought that "any surge coming from outside would be stopped at the other arrestor". Boy was I wrong. It toasted half the ports on my switch, my router, and my surge arrestor on my wireless equipment (valued at almost $1000 at the time), and about 5 NICs. I was on my computer at the time, and my screen literally "bounced" up and down, and blinked off for a second. The computer didn't reboot, but the NIC toasted instantly. Luckily no data was lost. Now I make sure I spend as much time on Ethernet surge protection as I do on Power.