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I'm not sure whether the external LVDS chips will be stronger, and as you are using the smallest EP2C devices you may as well give it a try.
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I digged into it some further, and it appears that the Cyclone II is capable of taking a 1kV discharge by human touch. Comparing that to some of the dedicated buffers which are typically 2kV/4kV/8kV, I'm wondering if it will make a large difference in my case. The equipment is usually installed once, the main part will be indoors, the remote part will be outdoors on the roof in an isolated plastic box connected to just this single RJ45 which also supplies power. The 1kV provided by the Cyclone II might be enough.
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To reduce the chance of breaking things you have to add additional protection devices as well.
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Like? The circuit does not have to survive a direct lightning hit.
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Also you must protect the circuit from false cureent supply loops while hotplugging the system (this if you are using RJ45 connectors, or in fact almost any connector).
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I understand what you mean, but I have to admit that I lack the experience to readily know where it would apply to my RJ45 signals. Could you give an example?
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Did you think about the termination of the mixed LVDS-LVCMOS pair? You may run into an incompatibility there.
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Well, that basically is solved (I think), because I use the LVDS termination and simply make sure that the slewrate for the configuration signals is slow enough and low frequency enough to survive the wrong termination.
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