>do you use mains surge protecters on your equipment
layer upon layer of mains surge protection: a primary £40 Belkin device nearest the wall socket , then a UPS, then another layer of mains protection (Belkin again), and for the modems only, a third layer of filtering (Tacima).
Indeed as you say, neutral is connected to earth.
When I lost a router a few years ago, it was just dead, I'm afraid I know no more than that, not one port gone. I lost a £2.5k server, completely doa, not a dead NIC. That was not good. Hard disk was fine, thank heavens.
The latest dead DLink modem could even be just a dead PSU, no lights at all on it. The port on the router is fine as I swapped in another modem as a health check.
Afraid I don't use a corded phone. All three lines are effectively DSL only, although I can do the usual quiet line test diagnostics, I keep a POTS phone for that.