WRT54GS Parental Control feature

If you're going to be buying this product because of the Parental Control
feature, you'd better look somewhere else.

I bought this to replace my D-Link DI-624 because of the Parental Control
feature. Which was a big mistake.

If you log off the OS (Windows XP in my case) without logging out of the
Parental Control applet, it will crash and after that would allow anyone to
browse the internet freely.

If you had a server in the network, that machine would have to go through
the same log in procedure to access the internet. There's no configuration
option to tell it which machines are exempted and which should be managed.

I was willing to pay the $39/year subscription if it worked half as good as
it is promised.

Supposedly, this Parental Control feature disables the router's built-in
Internet Access Policies. However, this is not the case.

Scenario: I have 1 computer for my younger brothers where I set up with the
built-in Internet Access Restriction to only allow that system's internet
access (using MAC or IP address) from 6:00 AM to 9:30 PM everyday.

After enabling Parental Control feature and sign-up for the trial period, I
had to enter in all the user names of all the people needing to have
internet access, along with their age level info.

After that I go back to each user and defined the Time, Web Browsing,
E-maill, and IM restrictions that I need to adjust for each of those users.
The interface is quite confusing. When you're modifying each user and
clicking on the "I'm Done" button means you're done with all the settings
and will automatically put you in the main home page of your browser.

After all the configuration is completed, it was time for testing: First and
foremost, I found out that the router's built-in Access Restriction was
still in effect. I wasn't able to access anything on the internet. Mind you
that this was taking place around 9:50 PM.

After disabling the built-in restriction completely, I was then prompted for
the sign-on page. I chose a user that I knew would be allowed to browse the
internet. A pop-up window came up requesting that I install a Netopia
plug-in, which after installed, then started another pop-up window with the
display of whoever is logged in to Parental Control at the time.

Like I mentioned earlier, you should first sign-out of Parental Control
before signing out of the OS to give other people the use of the computer,
otherwise, it will crash the Parental Control connection and will then allow
everyone else to browse the internet freely. Hey, maybe this is a back-door
they forgot to close?

For the time being, I'm going back to my half-the-price-of-WRT54GS-DLink
DI624 and along with squid+squidquard for proxy which has worked well enough
for me.

I can only wish WebWasher solution was lower-priced and does not have the
hefty hard-ware requirement



Louis




Tested Linksys

I too bought this router for the Parental Controls capabilities tha
they partnered with Netopia on. I specifically was interested in th
ability to create an "approved buddies" list for each user profile

The major issue is that it only allows you to enter 15 approved buddie
per person. My daughter has close to 100 that we approve of and I ca
only enter 15. This has made the whole point of buying this route
worthless (considering I already owned a Linksys wireless G router bu
it didn't have the parental controls)

Maybe Netopia or Linksys could fix this issue but my hope is dwendlin
since I contacted Linksys and was routed to 8 different people over a
hour and a half. Most of them had no clue what the parental contro
features were in their product

Very disappointed

--
bthompso
brought to you by http://www.wifi-forum.com