OBITALK takes down my network!

[Ravishal]

I was swapping out the telephone I use with my Obitalk 110 when I immediately noticed the status light turn red. Simultaneously the internet connection died in my house. I naturally assumed it was the modem and rebooted that. Nope, Rebooted the router. Still did not fix it. I then disconnected the Obitalk and boom, the network was back up. I plugged it back in and the internet went down again and the light stayed red. I disconnected the Obitalk and of course the internet came back. Not seeing a reset button on the Obitalk I disconnected the power for 5 minutes and then powered it back up. The light turned green and the network stayed up.

Would simply unplugging a phone connected to an Obitalk mess up the Obi which in turn messed up the router? Seems to be the case for me.

[MichiganTelephone]

Under normal circumstances, unplugging a phone would have no effect on your network connection, but there is always the slight possibility that you had a charge of static electricity built up when you were disconnecting your phone and it somehow jumped to your device, somehow causing a cascading failure.  This would be a rare occurrence but not entirely impossible, and could happen if you had a high static charge when touching any piece of networked equipment.

[Ravishal]

That certainly seems plausible. It pays to take heed of the advice to unplug the power adapter from the socket when disconnecting a device that has no on/off switch.