Disabling internet on demand

[dmurray14]

OK guys, here's what needs to be done...

I'm putting in 8 computers in a public area for students, and there will be a computer at the teacher's desk not too far away. The teacher would like to be able to switch off the internet on those computers from her computer, when she likes. Now, I was thinking of just putting a proxy server on the teacher's computer and telling all the IE's on the computer to use that proxy. Then, she could just turn the proxy server off when she didn't want them to have internet. Unfortunately, though, the kids are too smart for that...they can and will download Opera or Firebird right away and just use that. Any ideas? We want to be able to disable the internet WITHOUT disabling any other network related things.


Thanks
Dan

 

[dmurray14]

bump

 

[Teva24]

A Windows Solution.

Probably not what you are looking for, but you could write a script that could be remotely executed (a service maybe) that removes the default gateway for those public pc's.

And make sure that the students don't have admin/root access to add it back.

Windows NT/2K/Xp/2k3 example:

c:\windows\system32\deleteroute.cmd:
route delete 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.x

Where 192.168.0.x is your default gateway.

This will disable internet access, but leave local lan access enabled (as long as your lan doesn't have multiple sites, but you can just give static routes for those sites)

on the teachers pc setup a icon on the desktop that adds that command as a scheduled task that starts immediatly on those 8 public pc's. As long as the TaskScheduler service is running as system or a account that has permission it should work.

One problem: this will revert back to the normal route if they reboot (DHCP), so maybe login as admin and config the nic's with static ips, and no gateway, then the teacher has to ALLOW access instead of it being on by default.

-Teva24

TextText

 

[dmurray14]

Teva, this sounds like a great idea, thanks! What would the script to allow internet be? And how does the teacher's PC add tasks to the other PCs?

Thanks so much!

Dan

Edit: what is deleteroute.cmd?

 

[EHobaX]

If the router or hub or whatever is connecting the PCs to the internet is in the room, you can have the teacher just unplug the uplink port to the internet. My old company did this whenever we had a training seminar in one of the classrooms. It got very boring and MineSweeper can only take you so far.

 

[Teva24]

Take a look at this:
http://www.thecodeproject.com/system/remoteexec.asp

an example delete and add commands are below:
route delete 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.[PUT GATEWAY ADDRESS HERE]

route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.[PUT GATEWAY ADDRESS HERE]

So you could basically use that program on the link above and remotely execute one of these two commands on the remote computers from the teachers pc.

keep in mind that the students must not be admins and must not have access to the local route batch/script files.

-Teva24

 

[dmurray14]

You are awesome, thanks!