Another copper cable considered a "gold standard" for outdoor shielded + 9th ESD drain and ground wire, intended for long term rooftop and tower installation is Shireen. There's a variety of types. https://www.shireeninc.com/osc/cables/cat6 On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 6:30 PM Brandon Martin <lists.nanog@monmotha.net> wrote:
On 8/13/19 2:32 PM, Warren Kumari wrote:
This probably won't fully solve your problem, but I run a bunch of Ubiquiti access points and similar -- I suffered a number of lightning related outages, and then started using their TOUGHcable - https://www.ui.com/accessories/toughcable/
While ToughCable isn't bad (especially for the price), if you want something REALLY durable both physically and against electrical transients, I've been very happy with Primus C6CMXFS-1864BK. It costs quite a bit more than the ToughCable but has real water blocking (which means you had better be prepared to deal with "Icky Pic"), heavy shielding with drain, meets or exceeds CAT6 (which means you can push gigE a bit beyond 100m pretty reliably if you've got a tall tower or a hut far away from a tower base), and has 23AWG wire so PoE, especially Ubnt's crummy 24V passive POE, can go farther, too.
Be warned it's a bear to terminate. In addition to the waterblock, the cable diameter is too large for typical crimp-on RJ45 ends. You have to either use special ends (which Primus sells, among others) or terminate it to a punch block which, while not usually a problem in a hut, is often problematic up on a tower.
Ubnt also makes an outdoor fiber media converter I've found useful for "small cell" style wISP deployments where I can drag my own fiber to the tower/pole and don't want/need a hut or enclosure at the base. Part number is F-POE-G2. That'll let you get your power and signal separated. I do wish they'd just put SFP slots in their radios, but at the price they sell them for, I guess I can't complain too much. I'd put real 802.3af/at PoE higher on the list of wants, honestly.
As to actual surge protectors, I see there have been some other suggestions in the list, and I'll defer to them. I've personally had decent luck with just making sure the Ubnt passive POE injectors (which I need since I don't usually use their switches) are well grounded to be mostly sufficient (along with the tower and hut having proper grounding infrastructure). I've not lost any radios, though I've had some lockups requiring power cycle after nearby lightning strikes on some of the lower end WA based platforms. The XC based platforms seem hardier. My sample size isn't huge, though.
I'm usually of the impression that, unless you've got carrier (cellular or committed-rate microwave) class wireless gear on the tower or aggressive SLAs you have to meet from a wireless PoP, it's probably cheaper overall to just take reasonable precautions against lightning than it is to try to make things handle a "direct" strike. Figure in the wISP world, tech moves so fast that you're having to put new things on the tower at least every 3-5 years anyway, so as long as an unscheduled trip up to the tower doesn't cost you $ARM+$LEG, it's probably easier to just take a lightning strike that fries everything due to extreme proximity as an unscheduled upgrade than the try to handle it electrically.
"Nearby" strikes, static, electrical transients on your utility line, etc. are a different matter. Those you can economically protect against i.e. the protection will not cost as much or more than the gear and service you're protecting. -- Brandon Martin