Lightning is the main reason that endangers transmission line working safety and reliabilty today. The theory and characteristic of methods that not only estimate the lightning performance for back strike such as standard method, traveling wave method, Monte Carlo technique, treeing fault method, EMTP and so on but also for the shielding failure such as standard method, EGM, leader progression model and so on are summarized. The criterion of flashover for insulators is referred simply, furthermore, it gives the opinion that the development of research for the future.