I had an
interesting experience with lightning 4 years ago.
Bolt split a tree, arced into my phone line, blew a trench 20ft down the line, traveled another 20 to the house,
and still had enough juice when it hit the dsl modem to not only fry every piece of equipment connected to it--
it blew the network and phone jacks out of the walls.
Had to replace both the phone wiring and network cable runs-- I'm amazed it didn't cause a fire.
Home Insurance covered the damage, but recovering the data wasn't the easiest thing in the world.
Carbonite, Mozy etc. aren't feasible when you live out in the boonies and
have a tidily 768Kbps DSL connection from Ma Hell (or as I like to call 'em Bricksouth)
After spending days searching I found equipment from Blackbox that would help (without messing with the signal)
DSL+Phone with grounding wire RJ-45 with grounding wireThey do have one self-contained-but it's far more expensive
IsolatorCable (not sure about these for true broadband use)
sacrificial terminationground block unitFor protecting the rest of the house I'd recommend a whole house surge protector be installed (from Sycom, Leviton, Siemens or APC)
I'm not offering any link here due to the fact it would take all night due to myriad types.
(In Circuit Breaker Panel, mounted next to CB panel, Metering socket replacement, wall socket, etc.)