[TowerTalk] Ethernet grounding on tower?

[jimlux]

On 5/28/17 7:30 AM, John McCormick via TowerTalk wrote:
> I'm toying with the idea of putting a Power over Ethernet camera at the top of my tower, but don't want to defeat all the grounding work that I've done and provide an easy path into the house via the Ethernet. Most of the lightning/surge gear I've seen for Ethernet looks pretty light-weight and for indoor use. Ideally, I'd want to provide a path to ground at the base of the tower, as I do for all the coaxes, as well as a lightning protector in the enclosure box that I have on the side of the house (filled with PolyPhasers). This probably is a bad idea and I won't go forward with it, but thought I would check to see if anyone on this list has experience doing this and if there is an economical solution out there. Thanks and 73, John/K9KE


Check out places like L-com, which have myriad things for cabling and such.

You're going to wind up with something that has a gas gap or thyrector 
to ground. Ethernet is galvanically isolated, so the key is in keeping 
the voltages reasonable while getting the current to ground.

That said, my strategy today would be to use a dedicated WiFi link - if 
your DC power going up the tower blows up, that's cheap to fix, and it's 
easy to arrange it to be sufficiently physically separate from the 
network stuff.

You can get an inexpensive Wireless access point, some provide PoE to a 
camera, for the tower top.