Parental Controls Slow to Control with Merlin

[Carguyty]

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place, but I'm not sure where to begin. I've got an RT-AC88U and RT-AC68U in mesh with both running ASUSWRT-Merlin 386.1_2 in mesh with the AC88U as the router and the AC68U in node. Whenever the kids act foolish (which is plenty often), I like to disconnect their group from Wi-Fi by going to the phone app and, choosing family, and selecting their group to "block". More often than not, however, they stay connected with no proper feedback from the app or the website administration page. Is this normal? Is there a fix? It wasn't any better with standard ASUSWRT, but this is the first time I'm asking for help.

 

[Tech9]

by going to the phone app

Asus app doing same thing with official Asuswrt doesn't sound like Merlin related issue.

 

[ChatmanR]

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place, but I'm not sure where to begin. I've got an RT-AC88U and RT-AC68U in mesh with both running ASUSWRT-Merlin 386.1_2 in mesh with the AC88U as the router and the AC68U in node. Whenever the kids act foolish (which is plenty often), I like to disconnect their group from Wi-Fi by going to the phone app and, choosing family, and selecting their group to "block". More often than not, however, they stay connected with no proper feedback from the app or the website administration page. Is this normal? Is there a fix? It wasn't any better with standard ASUSWRT, but this is the first time I'm asking for help.

Did you ever find a solution to your problem?

 

[FelixGV]

I remember that version had a bug in the parental control. I had the same issue. With version 386.2_2 the issue was fixed.

 

[Carguyty]

Did you ever find a solution to your problem?

This was never resolved. I abandoned the entire setup for a Linksys Velop mesh. The parental controls were better, the administration over WAN was very helpful for accessing the controls from work, the WiFi6 speed and coverage was also pretty slick. Ultimately the kids grew older and started developing various habits that required me to look into network segregation that wasn’t available on the Linksys limited firmware. I wanted VLAN setups but I wasn’t ready to buy several new devices to lay out a new network architecture.
So I’m back to using the ASUS setup with Merlin firmware. The Velop APs are just that with WiFi6 access for just 2 devices. It’s less than ideal and underutilized horsepower, but with three guest networks on the ASUS router specifically for the two kids and the IoT to keep them isolated from everything else sort of solves the security concerns. Additionally, having their MACs in a whitelist for access to their SSID might give better results when the parental controls are implemented.
Last night was the first night with the new setup. I won’t know for several days if they’ve concocted a method to work around the limits. Hoping the change to 386.3_2 is indeed the big fix FelixGV was referencing. I’ll report back in a few weeks if I have positive results or if I need to move to scripted VLANs with chron jobs or something. Thanks for the interest instead of just telling me to ask somebody else.

 

[Carguyty]

Is this normal? The off time schedule for a device is 11:00p to 8:30a. This morning (for reasons) I need to block access to the network for all day. I block the computer for the kid but it is still registering traffic. Does the router need to perform a constant handshake with devices or is this evidence of a problem with this specific control implementation?

Picture is screenshot of the device being blocked manually and on schedule while still showing traffic.