Parental Controls don't work

[Zooks64]

I just figured out that my kids can still game and Skype even after they are supposed to be cut off from the internet.

As long as they started the game client and Skype call before the cutoff time they were golden. Sigh.

Silly me never bothered to check on them until this school break - the little snots have been gaming like rockstars.

I sent support request to ASUS and they asked if downgrading firmware helped??? Srsly?

Kids say this router never cut them off - wishing I had my E4200 back right about now.

Anybody else having Parental Control issues?

 

[BostonDan]

Also looking for a comprehensive solution that will allow adults in the house unrestricted access while limiting the kids to websites I specify. While there are routers which can block certain sites, do keyword limiting, or limit the entire house using OpenDNS, i have yet to find something that will allow only websites I specify for the kids and unrestricted access for adults. Please keep me posted if you find something.

 

[markmiller77e]

Try Qustodio

I personally use a free software called Qustodio at home. Light weight and easy to use, it is a complete solution with automatic blocking and real time reporting of time and sites visited. Also, you will be able to view this data for 30 days. I use it to block bad content as also watch who my son talks to on Facebook. It shows me the profile pictures of accounts that he interacts with. The site is www.qustodio.com.

 

[scotde]

check out Shibby

I have written about this before. I also found the stock firmware parental controls to be unreliable and a pain. I tried various workrounds without success. I wrote to Asus about it and they said they were looking at the issue, but that was some time ago - it would be good if more people got on to Asus and told them to get their acts together. I switched to Tomato-Shibby firmware. I control the kids through the "access restrictions" set-up in Shibby - it is flexible and reliable. The wireless performance suffers a bit but the parental controls makes up for it.
Make sure you flash it properly if you are going to try it out. The first time the clients show up in the device list I assign them a 'static lease' (there is a link under the client name) and then set-up "access restrictions" for each kid based on their IP/MAC address. The good thing is that you can set up different time restrictions for each kid and assign different and numerous clients to each restriction. The time restrictions can then be altered whenever you want.
The Tomato software also offers the possibility to track IP usage and websites visited according to client, but I wouldn't advocate snooping on the kids. It would be great if Asus could learn from Tomato Shibby on this and/or Merlin could somehow include it in his builds.

 

[libra1310]

So far, the best parental controls that I have seen is on a Dlink DIR655. I love the parental controls, schedules etc. YOu can even set specific game site restriction so that the games are blocked off.
However, performance is somewhat slow and problem is that whenever it syncs time, there is a cutoff in the connection until it connects again in about 1 min, which can be a pain when surfing or watching vids.
That's why I'm trying out the RTN66 but the parental controls are too basic, either on/off and time only.
If ASUS can implement the same parental controls, it would be top dog among all routers.
I suppose its too much to ask for the best of everything

 

[red fuji]

I been experiencing the same problem- I am really frustrated and fed up- i paid good money for this supposedly highly praised router. I keep updating firmwares one after another thinking the next one will have the fix . Nope. I been holding on to that hope for too long - since i bought this piece of crap. i just updated firmware again and problem still exists. Is Asus not able to fix this bug or they lack the know how. Parental control does not want to follow any time slots !
my system clock is correctly synced - not the problem. Asus really needs to get serious with this bug. It is pissing people off.

 

[scotde]

I been experiencing the same problem- I am really frustrated and fed up- i paid good money for this supposedly highly praised router. I keep updating firmwares one after another thinking the next one will have the fix . Nope. I been holding on to that hope for too long - since i bought this piece of crap. i just updated firmware again and problem still exists. Is Asus not able to fix this bug or they lack the know how. Parental control does not want to follow any time slots !
my system clock is correctly synced - not the problem. Asus really needs to get serious with this bug. It is pissing people off.

If it is an option for you, you could try Shibby-Tomato firmware and use the 'Access Restriction' commands to control the times of access - you can assign multiple devices to the each command. I use it for my kids' access and it works fine, though some say there is a small drop in signal strength and range. There is also the pain of flashing a different Firmware on to the router, but you can go back to the stockware if done correctly.
I read also somewhere, I think from Merlin, that the bug in the parental controls has to do with Internet Explorer, so maybe try opening the firmware in another browser like Chrome and see how it goes.
I have been at ASUS to change and develop their parental controls for a while now, but it does not seem to be a priority. IMHO they are missing a big marketing opportunity.

 

[red fuji]

.
I have been at ASUS to change and develop their parental controls for a while now, but it does not seem to be a priority. IMHO they are missing a big marketing opportunity.

'fix parental control' is definitely not on their list of things to do. As far as missing the market, they hang the buyers giving them false hope responding that they are working on it- when in fact they Dont care and have assigned the task to their janitor. until the return period is over and buyer is stuck with the router and Asus has their profit $.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Plus isn't this kind of like hiding the liquor? If a kid is motivated enough s/he will find a way around it, right? I'm not talking sophisticated MAC spoofing & proxy servers, but more like switching to a different physical machine or turning the wifi off on an iPhone to use unfiltered LTE data instead?

I mention this only from the perspective (similar, but different than yours) of someone who has tried to limit the avalanche of ads, and unnesecary background traffic of stat reporting, log uploading, etc, and essentially have learned that spyware/adware/malware can fight me with much greater skill and effort than I can defend against it with.

(See my earlier post in a recent thread on URL filtering, my back of the napkin math makes me think pages load slower when using URL filtering than if I hadn't blocked ads in the first place). However, I still try.

 

[coxhaus]

Kids are tough to control since there are so many options out there. You can control DNS by locking the DNS server at the router and only passing DNS traffic for the DNS servers you allow providing you can use access lists. If you want to control the internet site by site then you need something like free for home use Untangle software and run it on a spare PC. Your wireless devices need to all be behind the Untangle software so it will require some network reconfiguration. I run a front door router without wireless and run Untangle as a transparent bridge. The Untangle software will run as a router also. The nice thing about Untangle is it much more flexible than a home router. It also catches spyware and viruses trying pass through your network. Untangle has a nice reporting feature which lets you know what traffic is actually passing through your network.

Untangle is much more feature rich than a router for parental controls. The problem is it is not just plug and play. It takes a little work.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Thx for that info @coxhaus, I hadn't heard of Untangle.

I've never used it but if you have a spare PC to put to work you could also use something like Astaro's UTM, which is free for home use.

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-utm-home-edition.aspx

 

[picasso]

I don't get this: filtering web traffic via a MAC address is a basic service. Why is it so difficult to implement ? I bought the Asus RT-N66U because of this feature but it does not work.

I do not want to install SW on each device, I want to have central control ...

 

[PrivateJoker]

I don't get this: filtering web traffic via a MAC address is a basic service. Why is it so difficult to implement ? I bought the Asus RT-N66U because of this feature but it does not work.

I do not want to install SW on each device, I want to have central control ...

Sophos UTM & Untangled are more like home firewalls, they aren't installed on each device (check out the links I put in last post).

Filtering traffic by MAC address is actually the function of a layer 2 managed switch.

I'd be real curious to see what consumer decides exist that allow you to setup per MAC rules beyond overall QOS.

 

[DrTeeth]

I have to say I have no interest in controlling my children's internet roaming. I just use parental controls to cut off their internet access - and I get them to leave their cell phones (aka wi-fi hot spots ) downstairs.

They can access the net from so many places and with so many devices, it is pointless. What I have done is to bring them up to be very savvy. If they wanted to see anything iffy when they were younger, they would ask me and I would let them under my direct supervision. This only happened once a good few years ago when my son was going through a phase. The mode if upbringing is also important so if they DO see anything that bothers them, they know they can talk to either me or their mother without recriminations or punishment. They also knew about internet security from a very young age.

All I am interested in is my children's well-being and I do not believe that there is a high chance that they will stumble across anything that will harm them.

 

[coxhaus]

Thx for that info @coxhaus, I hadn't heard of Untangle.

I've never used it but if you have a spare PC to put to work you could also use something like Astaro's UTM, which is free for home use.

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-utm-home-edition.aspx

I heard Astaro UTM is good maybe a little harder to setup than Untangle software. I have been running Untangle for 4 or 5 years. Astaro was going through some changes back then so I used Untangle. Untangle runs as a transparent bridge or a router your choice when you install. One of the problems with Untangle is they do not support VLANS. Any traffic passing through Untangle, the vlan tags get dropped. You just need to plan your network according to losing vlan tags.

 

[Radical_53]

I'm running a current 3.0.0.4.374.32 build by RMerlin and the parental controls do indeed seem to work here.
It' may not be the most comfortable solution to set individual schedules for each and every device but it gets the job done.
The kids rooms are on the first floor, maybe the rather weak signal I'm giving them helps here? No matter what they're doing though they're cut off the minute they're supposed to.

 

[PrivateJoker]

I'm running a current 3.0.0.4.374.32 build by RMerlin and the parental controls do indeed seem to work here.
It' may not be the most comfortable solution to set individual schedules for each and every device but it gets the job done.
The kids rooms are on the first floor, maybe the rather weak signal I'm giving them helps here? No matter what they're doing though they're cut off the minute they're supposed to.

First, this comes from the perspective of a non-parent (I have a 7 year old dog but she is not web savvy and can't use a trackpad either), so feel free to heavily discount the value of my input on this subject...

That said, I've heard parent friends of mine putting their main computer for kids to use in the kitchen or family room, just to keep them on their toes.

Also if the child has an ios device you can download the enterprise iPhone configuration utility (it's free) and (though I don't believe you can do nuanced web restrictions), you can do some pretty cool stuff with it. I've played around with it to try to enforce wifi policies in my ios devices (pertaining to which APs they use and where). Available from Apple here, scroll down to Deployment > Configuration resources, you'll see downloads for Win & OSX.

Let's you do stuff like this (personal screenshot).

 

[Radical_53]

That sounds pretty nice, thanks! We used to have the "family laptop" in the living room too but now my older son finally got his own gear.
I'm sure he wouldn't do anything stupid but the Asus system helps to remind him how late it is

A full-blown web filter or anything alike would be too much hassle, I'd rather "teach" him how to get around.
The Apple software looks really nice though, maybe I should finally do the swap. Android is nice and cheap but it surely has its downsides.

 

[picasso]

A central computer works good with small kids. But if you have a bunch of teenagers, like I do, this is no longer possible.
And if you have a dozen of heterogenous network devices (Android, iPod, iPad, PS3, Win, ...) you definitely need a central point to manage wifi access. And the most central point is the router.

That´s why Asus sucks when they print "Parental Control" on the package but it does not work.

I installed the Merlin build this morning and it seems to work: at 10pm the access for some devices was denied.

 

[Radical_53]

As I said, yes. It simply cuts their internet access at the given time.