Based on the simplified analysis of a medium voltage network operation during an earth fault, the main types of the neutral grounding (earthing) used in the world are briefly described. Only the essential characteristics of customers supply safety and quality are related. Majority of faults in distribution medium voltage (MV) networks are earth faults. Their share in the total number of faults is typically over 50 %. Considering that neutral grounding makes significant impact to earth fault characteristics, selection procedure the neutral grounding demands serious consideration. Problems that appear during earth faults as well as the way of their solving with resonant grounding system are discussed. Technology development and permanent increase of the power quality demands have made resonant grounding as an acceptable solution, even in the countries which have never used it before. Positive experiences with resonant grounding in France and Italy are presented. The French and Italian experiences are very interesting from a Croatian standpoint. A few years ago in these countries (as in Croatia) the resonant grounding of the MV networks was not used. French networks are dominantly grounded through low ohmic resistors, while Italian networks are mainly operated with isolated neutral. Principles of the earth fault current compensation are described through the parameter theory and the phase model. Based on these theories, the “typical” 20 kV distribution MV network is programmed in the software package MATLAB. This network is used in order to present voltage and current characteristics of the sound network as well as during earth faults. Compensation coils can be divided according to the way of tuning and according to whether or not they have a ferromagnetic core. The selection and the way of connection of the compensation coil depend on the HV/MV transformer type, basically on its rated power and connection. Considering that the compensation coils with continuous tuning and ferromagnetic core as well as the compensation coils made of combination of a few air coils are the most often implemented today, they are described in more details. To use all advantages of the resonant grounding, compensation coils should be tuned to form a resonant circle with the network line to earth (zero sequence) capacitances. Tuning accuracy should be checked frequently for tracking frequent network configuration changes. Tuning system should ensure that the compensation coil inductivity is always close to the resonant point. Different tuning systems, problems that occur in tuning and the way of solving these problems by using a current injection tuning system are presented.Protection in resonant grounded networks is more complicated than the one in low ohmic grounded or isolated networks. In resonant grounded networks the classic watt metric protection is less effective, due to unselective detection of earth faults with fault resistances larger than 4 kΩ. Therefore, in resonant grounded networks, besides watt metric protection, additional protection able to selectively detect high ohmic earth faults should be mounted. Different earth fault protection methods, their advantages and disadvantages as well as the influence on the improvement of the selective earth fault detection are presented.