Shut off network for a device at a specific time using Mac address? RT-AC88U

[swanlee]

I have an Asus RT-AC88U router and was wondering if I could set it to shut of the network for a device using it's mac address at a specific time.

In short I want my sons tablet to be shut off the network at 9pm each night and then back on at 6am so he doesn;t wake up and try and get on his tablet during the night.

I've poked around at a few settings but could not find something that did this, maybe I missed it.

Thanks for any help

 

[ColinTaylor]

Sounds exactly like the Parental Controls under AiProtection/Time Scheduling.

 

[swanlee]

Yep that is what I wanted thanks a ton

 

[swanlee]

Well theoretically that was a good idea but it did not work well. The schedule didn't seem to work right and blocked my sons tablet even though the schedule said it should be allowed and when it was working he kept getting slow connection speeds and loading all the time. So I had to turned it all off

Bummer wish it actually worked well. Seems the times don't work and putting a device in these settings cause over head to the device making the connection slow

 

[OzarkEdge]

Well theoretically that was a good idea but it did not work well. The schedule didn't seem to work right and blocked my sons tablet even though the schedule said it should be allowed and when it was working he kept getting slow connection speeds and loading all the time. So I had to turned it all off

Bummer wish it actually worked well. Seems the times don't work and putting a device in these settings cause over head to the device making the connection slow

There may be another Time Scheduler under Professional for each band. This would turn OFF an entire WLAN, presumably overnight.

OE

 

[ColinTaylor]

Does the tablet have a cellphone connection? If the WiFi access is blocked it might be falling back to the mobile connection, which would explain the slow speeds.

 

[swanlee]

Does the tablet have a cellphone connection? If the WiFi access is blocked it might be falling back to the mobile connection, which would explain the slow speeds.

No it's wifi only tablet, as soon as I turned off the time schedule everything was working fine on the tablet. The feature simply does not work as intended. It blocked my sons tablet even when I designated it in the schedule to be on and when it was on it was so slow it was not useable. Broken feature, turn it off and the tablet runs fine

 

[swanlee]

There may be another Time Scheduler under Professional for each band. This would turn OFF an entire WLAN, presumably overnight.

OE

I don't want that, I just want my sons tablet to not hit the internet starting at 9pm and allow it again at 6am. The Air protect feature theoretically should do exactly what I want but in practice it did not function correctly.

 

[OzarkEdge]

I don't want that, I just want my sons tablet to not hit the internet starting at 9pm and allow it again at 6am. The Air protect feature theoretically should do exactly what I want but in practice it did not function correctly.

Parental controls seem to work here on an 86U. It did not stop a Tune-in session until I stopped and tried to restart it. Also blocked Chrome. I did a 2 minute test... no kids here!

OE

 

[roguetr]

Check the router has synchronised it's time correctly and the correct timezone is set. Also if you haven't, update the firmware or try Merlin, you may be dealing with a legacy issue. The feature _should_ work.

Just some suggestions, sorry if they're of no help.

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[Smokie]

Time scheduling hasn't worked in a long time. It's one of the main reasons I purchased this router. I have 3 kids that I need to be able to restrict but it does not work correctly. Blocks them when they should have access when they are allowed it shows connection in Windows but Speed Test come back as 0

The last time I was on merlin firmware it was the same.

 

[roguetr]

Time scheduling hasn't worked in a long time. It's one of the main reasons I purchased this router. I have 3 kids that I need to be able to restrict but it does not work correctly. Blocks them when they should have access when they are allowed it shows connection in Windows but Speed Test come back as 0

The last time I was on merlin firmware it was the same.

I just tested and it seemed to work fine for me. I'll do some longer term testing with my son's devices. I'm on an RT-AC5300 running latest Merlin stable.

I did see this:

https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?ur...&share_tid=49254&share_fid=52425&share_type=t

I have CTF enabled but I also have QoS enabled. Maybe I'd have more issues with stock config. I also turned time scheduling off and on after configuration just out of habit. I also made sure the time stamps in the log lined up with what I expected the time to be. I could have checked on the CMD line but was being lazy.

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[Smokie]

I just tested and it seemed to work fine for me. I'll do some longer term testing with my son's devices. I'm on an RT-AC5300 running latest Merlin stable.

I did see this:

https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?ur...&share_tid=49254&share_fid=52425&share_type=t

I have CTF enabled but I also have QoS enabled. Maybe I'd have more issues with stock config. I also turned time scheduling off and on after configuration just out of habit. I also made sure the time stamps in the log lined up with what I expected the time to be. I could have checked on the CMD line but was being lazy.

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Im using the RT-AC5300 aswell and it's a beast. WiFi range is amazing throughout the whole house. I stopped using merlin firmware because every time I left the house and came back onto the network my speeds was terrible, sometimes less than a meg. I never turned Nat acceleration off because I'm not sure if it affects devices getting ports open ect, my Xbox and PlayStation. I have also never used QOS either as I have a 360M line and don't think there is any issue of bandwith been spread around the house, never have buffering or anything like that even when everyone is using.

I might jump back onto Merlin latest stable firmware and give it another go. Thanks for your testing!

 

[roguetr]

Im using the RT-AC5300 aswell and it's a beast. WiFi range is amazing throughout the whole house. I stopped using merlin firmware because every time I left the house and came back onto the network my speeds was terrible, sometimes less than a meg. I never turned Nat acceleration off because I'm not sure if it affects devices getting ports open ect, my Xbox and PlayStation. I have also never used QOS either as I have a 360M line and don't think there is any issue of bandwith been spread around the house, never have buffering or anything like that even when everyone is using.

I might jump back onto Merlin latest stable firmware and give it another go. Thanks for your testing!

A beast it is! ... I only just realised the QoS option I'd recently chosen (bandwidth limiter) wasn't working correctly so I've now disabled CTF, which has fixed it. Unfortunately I'm on ADSL2+ so I can't determine if there's going to be a significant performance hit if disabling CTF is a requirement for proper time scheduling. I can say; the 1 hour I blocked my phone and the cut off time I set for my kid's devices, all worked perfectly.

I'll keep it set this way at least for a week and check back.

I had never planned on using this feature but I can envision a lot less negotiation and arguments about cut off times at night

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[Smokie]

A beast it is! ... I only just realised the QoS option I'd recently chosen (bandwidth limiter) wasn't working correctly so I've now disabled CTF, which has fixed it. Unfortunately I'm on ADSL2+ so I can't determine if there's going to be a significant performance hit if disabling CTF is a requirement for proper time scheduling. I can say; the 1 hour I blocked my phone and the cut off time I set for my kid's devices, all worked perfectly.

I'll keep it set this way at least for a week and check back.

I had never planned on using this feature but I can envision a lot less negotiation and arguments about cut off times at night

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

The one thing I thought might be causing the issue is that I have Web app and filters also enabled. All the kids machines are added here and adult content is ticked, to block any kind of adult content. Does NAT acceleration affect what I think it does? Set to Auto allows devices to open and close ports as required? If I disable it I will have to port forward anything that requires it?

 

[roguetr]

Oh, as far as ports open etc, CTF is apparently more of a hindrance. From my understanding there are two levels of CTF, plain CTF and CTF + AF.

With both, documentation states you are unable to port forward and I'm guessing the router determines whether CTF should be in use, hence enabling CTF is labelled "Auto". I believe you can check if it's in use in Tools -> Sysinfo -> Network -> HW Acceleration.

It is suggested for 200Mbps+ that CTF is enabled but it doesn't hurt to test. It's quite possible if you're port forwarding that it's being disabled or in peer to peer gaming it's being selectively disabled ... but I'm definitely not sure how it functions in that scenario.

Here's the link I last looked at for CTF:
https://routerguide.net/nat-acceleration-on-or-off/

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[roguetr]

The one thing I thought might be causing the issue is that I have Web app and filters also enabled. All the kids machines are added here and adult content is ticked, to block any kind of adult content. Does NAT acceleration affect what I think it does? Set to Auto allows devices to open and close ports as required? If I disable it I will have to port forward anything that requires it?

Ok, so potentially connections like port forwarded ones are flagged to bypass hardware acceleration, if that is at all possible. Otherwise it's likely CTF is generally disabled on your router due to the requirements of the facilities your using.

The idea is that any facility that requires a packet to be be inspected, needs that packet stored and therefore can't work with CTF enabled.

Don't quote me

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[roguetr]

Opening and closing ports is a function of UPnP. Despite that, I don't have UPnP enabled and I've had no issues gaming on my PS4. Currently my favourite game is P2P (firewall zero hour) and I've not had any issues.

There are very few games that don't use an intermediary matchmaking server that facilitates connections without the need for UPnP. I would only enable UPnP when I have to ... and I never have had to

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[Smokie]

I'll have another tinker around and see how things work out. Learn something new every day

 

[roguetr]

I'll have another tinker around and see how things work out. Learn something new every day

Yeah same, I just assumed that a lot of these facilities just work but I guess there's compromises when you cram everything into a small package.

In a corporate/enterprise environment these facilities would be handled by dedicated appliances or entire servers so I guess it makes sense

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