RT-AC68U new interface for parental controls time scheduling

[GregL65]

After working through some difficulty with parental controls time scheduling on my RT-AC68U tonight, I thought I'd share what I found in case it might save others some time.

I had previously set up parental controls time scheduling with several of our family's devices, but then I had to reset the router to resolve a connection problem. That fixed the connection problem, but I didn't get around to re-figuring out which device was which so that I could set up time scheduling again. We have about 18 devices. Since the kids are on summer vacation from school, time scheduling is not as important right now.

But tonight my wife wanted me to set it up with our TV to discourage kids from sneaking downstairs to watch it in the middle of the night.

I found that the interface for setting up time scheduling was completely different than when I had done it before. But it wasn't too hard to figure out, so I set it up to "Offtime Schedule" 1am - 5am.

Immediately the TV stopped streaming, though it was early evening. I tried reversing it so that "Offtime Schedule" was 5am - 1am. That brought back streaming. With a little digging it appeared to me that "Offtime" meant that disabling was turned off. So you want to schedule "Offtime" for when you want the internet to be available for the device.

That worked until 10pm, when streaming stopped with an error about internet access. I wondered if it could be a time zone problem. Had I set up a time zone with the old interface? I couldn't recall. I looked and the only time zone I found was in Administration/System/Basic Config/Time Zone. It was set on Greenwich Mean Time. I set it for my local time, Pacific time.

That didn't help.

I looked for another time zone everywhere in the interface and found none. I looked in the user manual and found that it spoke of a time zone for each device's schedule. But that's in the context of the old interface, and that time zone does not appear to be there anymore in the new interface.

Then it occurred to me -- 10pm Pacific time is 1am Eastern time. Was the router using Eastern time?

I set the "Offtime" to be 3 hours later -- 8am - 4am. 8am - 4am Eastern time is the same as 5am - 1am Pacific time. But that didn't work either.

Then I wondered, do I need to set the system time back to the default, Greenwich mean time? I tried that and -- it worked!

So .... the takeaways are, for setting up parental controls time scheduling with the new interface:
-- "Offtime" means the time you want internet access to be AVAILABLE for that device. Think of "Off" as meaning turning the disabling off.
-- Leave the system time zone on the default, GREENWICH MEAN TIME. If you need to set it to your local time zone for some other reason, I'm not sure what effect that will have on parental controls time scheduling.
-- Set the schedule for EASTERN TIME ZONE. If you live in Hawaii or Arizona, which do not observe daylight savings time, I think that will mean changing the time schedule twice a year.

Good luck!

 

[fourty6and2]

Thanks for all the details! Was just setting this up and got puzzled by “Offtime.”

Question on the times though. I’m trying to set the “Offtime” times according to the System Time shown right above. Based on your post, sounds like you think it should be Eastern?

 

[GregL65]

A couple days later my wife reported that the television wasn't working at a time when it should. We decided to remove protection, and I haven't had time to investigate. So I'm not sure now I was right. But it's possible that there was some other unrelated brief glitch.

But no, according to my few experiments before that, it only worked for me with the system time zone set to Greenwich Mean Time -- not Eastern.

Where Eastern time comes in is that I set the "Offtimes" according to Eastern time, not my local time zone. That doesn't mean selecting the word "Eastern" anywhere. Instead it means that, for example, in my case, if I wanted 1:00 AM, I set the Offtime for 4:00 AM. Because when it's 4:00 AM Eastern time, it's 1:00 AM my local time (Pacific time).

When time allows, I think what I'll do to investigate further is, leaving system time on Greenwich mean time and using Eastern time for setting the Offtimes, I'll deny internet to the television for one hour and wait for someone to complain. That should tell me what the offset is, if any, with those settings. If no one complains after a couple days, suggesting that the affected time was late at night, I'll start moving the denial hour forward an hour at a time, waiting for a hit.

 

[the_way]

After working through some difficulty with parental controls time scheduling on my RT-AC68U tonight, I thought I'd share what I found in case it might save others some time.

I had previously set up parental controls time scheduling with several of our family's devices, but then I had to reset the router to resolve a connection problem. That fixed the connection problem, but I didn't get around to re-figuring out which device was which so that I could set up time scheduling again. We have about 18 devices. Since the kids are on summer vacation from school, time scheduling is not as important right now.

But tonight my wife wanted me to set it up with our TV to discourage kids from sneaking downstairs to watch it in the middle of the night.

I found that the interface for setting up time scheduling was completely different than when I had done it before. But it wasn't too hard to figure out, so I set it up to "Offtime Schedule" 1am - 5am.

Immediately the TV stopped streaming, though it was early evening. I tried reversing it so that "Offtime Schedule" was 5am - 1am. That brought back streaming. With a little digging it appeared to me that "Offtime" meant that disabling was turned off. So you want to schedule "Offtime" for when you want the internet to be available for the device.

That worked until 10pm, when streaming stopped with an error about internet access. I wondered if it could be a time zone problem. Had I set up a time zone with the old interface? I couldn't recall. I looked and the only time zone I found was in Administration/System/Basic Config/Time Zone. It was set on Greenwich Mean Time. I set it for my local time, Pacific time.

That didn't help.

I looked for another time zone everywhere in the interface and found none. I looked in the user manual and found that it spoke of a time zone for each device's schedule. But that's in the context of the old interface, and that time zone does not appear to be there anymore in the new interface.

Then it occurred to me -- 10pm Pacific time is 1am Eastern time. Was the router using Eastern time?

I set the "Offtime" to be 3 hours later -- 8am - 4am. 8am - 4am Eastern time is the same as 5am - 1am Pacific time. But that didn't work either.

Then I wondered, do I need to set the system time back to the default, Greenwich mean time? I tried that and -- it worked!

So .... the takeaways are, for setting up parental controls time scheduling with the new interface:
-- "Offtime" means the time you want internet access to be AVAILABLE for that device. Think of "Off" as meaning turning the disabling off.
-- Leave the system time zone on the default, GREENWICH MEAN TIME. If you need to set it to your local time zone for some other reason, I'm not sure what effect that will have on parental controls time scheduling.
-- Set the schedule for EASTERN TIME ZONE. If you live in Hawaii or Arizona, which do not observe daylight savings time, I think that will mean changing the time schedule twice a year.

Good luck!

I cannot confirm this meaning of "Offtime" here. Offtime means internet is off for the respective device, that is the internet access is blocked.
Be sure to switch on the button in the right pane. If in doubt, check for the offtime in the timeline (the menu button in the top right).

 

[Josh Schneider]

I just stumbled upon this old thread and have to say, I think the meaning of "Offtime" is definitely the time that the device should be blocked from Internet access. The difficulty I still have is figuring out how to span days, or maybe what the 24th hour is as compared with the 00th hour. I'm just now trying to set an off time for a device using 23:59 as the start and 8:00 as the end (meaning it starts just before midnight on one day and ends at 8am the next day. From what I've seen so far, I think this works, generally, but would be interested in anyone else's input. Mostly, it seems to be trial-and-error as to what works, and I haven't even messed with time-zone (think I have NTP enabled, though)