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I had an accident in the house and one of the LAN (cat. 6) cables including RJ-45 connector has been flooded. This "flooded" cable, along with other (dry) ones, was connected into a working gigabit router with WiFi but it was the only one that was not connected to the PC. After a few minutes, I took out the plug from the water and dried up with a paper towel. Currently, I do not see an anomaly in the operation of the router, but its operation is very important to me. I do not know if there is a risk of a short circuit in gigabit LAN/RJ45 (568B) technology.

I have a question if could the water (with a large amount of dish liquid) cause a short circuit and damage/harm the router to which the cable was connected?

JRE
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Xolex
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  • There is no way to tell, any water with a substance in it will cause it to conduct. If the water really came into your router it would cause a short wherever it is. – Voltage Spike Jul 02 '18 at 15:38

3 Answers3

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dish water is unlikely to damage the router, but it could degrade the connections between the gold-plated contacts and the wires behind them.

If you're worried rinse the cable with clean water, pat dry and then rinse again with denatured alcohol then dry again, that should get most of the moisture out. The router will be slightly warmer than ambient so it should dry itself the rest of the way.

Jasen Слава Україні
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All Ethernet connections are supposed to be galvanically isolated with transformers inside the device. This serves to prevent ground loops and protect the components behind the transformer from external voltage and short circuits. Most likely the router is perfectly fine. The main thing I would be worried about is water damage to the cable and connector.

alex.forencich
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Just as Jasen has answered there is another way to dry the connector out. To get the moisture out of the connector simply put the connector into a bowl of "RICE". By rice I mean dry rice. Dry rice is an excellent moisture absorber.

Sohaib Imran Bhatti
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