Schedule Internet On/Off to block kids

[ark42]

So my dad (who I don't live with) finally got DSL after SBC lowered it to $14.95/month, but he wants a bullet-proof way to keep the other kids (ones I'm not related to..) from using the internet, particularly AIM, past midnight.
He got some D-Link (DI-524?) router with 1 WAN, 4 LAN, and wireless for $20 at best buy (after rebates) and it allows scheduling filters and firewall activity to block or allow depending on the time of the day. The D-Link is now set to handle the PPPoE instead of the SpeedStream DSL modem, which is just in bridge mode now, so you can'y simply bypass the router without knowing all of the passwords to reconfigure things. I set the router up to just deny all traffic from midnight to 6am every day of the week, and we tested it by changing it to block access a few minutes in the future to see what would happen.
What the router will do when the filter kicks in, is block any NEW connection, but it keeps all existing connections alive with no option to disconnect them. This cuts off web access since no new port 80 connections can get out, but does not cut off AIM, since AIM maintains a constant connection to the AOL server.

Does anybody know for certain of any other brand (Linksys, Netgear?) cheap router that has scheduling that will actually kill active connections? I don't want to install some flaky parental control software on his computer, since its only 400MHz, and software is easier for kids to bypass. If Windows 2000 could just log off all users after midnight, that would work too, but I think only NT4 had that feature. I don't want to tell him to return the router and try another if other routers aren't going to cut off existing connections though.

 

[nweaver]

get a power timer, (like your christmas lights) and have it turn off the router at midnight, back on at 6:00 AM

 

[ark42]

That won't really stop the kids from just unpluging the timer or plugging the router right into the outlet. I'm sure my dad falls asleep before the kids and doesn't want to be awake to babysit teenagers at 2am.

 

[Sushifiend3000]

Maybe there's a way to send a reset command to the router just before the port filter activates? That should break all existing connections, and the router will power up with the filter rules in place for anything new. You could even do it from outside the LAN.

 

[ark42]

I was looking at a .cmd file with:
start http://user:pass@192.168.1.1/some_file.cgi?disconnect=Disconnect
from a task scheduled as administrator, which could just disconnect the PPPoE entirely, but it seems to launch firefox as administrator and prompt the user if its ok to log into 192.168.1.1 with the given username.
The best solution really would be to know if a different brand router has the ability to break existing connections when a scheduled firewall entry takes place.

*edit* to not parse emoticons p)

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: ark42
I was looking at a .cmd file with:
start http://userass@192.168.1.1/some_file.cgi?disconnect=Disconnect
from a task scheduled as administrator, which could just disconnect the PPPoE entirely, but it seems to launch firefox as administrator and prompt the user if its ok to log into 192.168.1.1 with the given username.
The best solution really would be to know if a different brand router has the ability to break existing connections when a scheduled firewall entry takes place.

*edit* to not parse emoticons P)

If you're a Linux/Unix guru, that would work fine... just set up a crontab with the following command:

0 0 * * * wget --http-user=user --http-pass=pass http://some_file.cgi?disconnect=disconnect

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: EatSpam

If you're a Linux/Unix guru, that would work fine... just set up a crontab with the following command:

0 0 * * * wget --http-user=user --http-pass=pass http://some_file.cgi?disconnect=disconnect

You can make that work on windows as well. Just download wget for Win32, write a batch and schedule it as a task.

 

[nweaver]

secure physical access to the router. If they unplug/replug the router, then it will come back up with the filtered settings and disconnected sessions anyway. And you wouldn't TELL them "yeah, it's blocking you because I reboot the router to dump you off first"