Murray.pa@XEROX.COM (09/07/86)
If you can possibly find the $ for the fibers, that's the way to go. If you talk to anybody in the fiber business, this is probably the first application they will mention. I suggest a very cautious, respectful approach when dealing with things as potent as lightning. You may think your buildings are both grounded but at the currents developed near lightning strikes, all sorts of unobvious things will happen. Consider what will happen when your whole net goes down. You may only have a few machines today, but you know that more be running tomorrow. People will be using them for term projects and writing their thesis. Networks are addicting. Remember that it will happen durning the end of term rush. We have one (coax) ethernet under the street to another building. 6 or 7 years ago, a lightning bolt hit the hill a bit beyond that building. It fried the front end transistor in dozen or so transcievers. Each fried transistor was a short accross the coax. That whole net was down until they found the last dead transciever. There were lots of people milling around the halls and grumbling... (At least we could scrounge enough transcievers on short notice to get everybody back on the air.) (That was a long time ago. A simple resistor in the right place will probably provide enough protection. Most transcievers probably include one now.)