How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Using a Superhub 2 in the living room that feeds two desktop PCs on the ground floor using wired cable connections and 4 laptops on the second floor using wifi.

Two of the laptops on the second floor are used by our children and I want to stop them using wifi during the night, but not any of the other computers. I have caught them too many times using internet 2 or 3am and that is not good for health or academic performance the next day.

I have no experience of blocking wifi, so googled a bit. Some matching threads suggested using MAC address filtering provided by the Superhub to disable access to the MAC addresses of the childrens laptops.

Q1. how do I find the MAC addresses of their laptops? Their laptops run Windows 7 and Ubuntu and using them requires passwords that I do not know. Can I get their MAC addresses from the router. How? Only I know the password to the router, so if I can block night wifi access they would not be able to to restore their MAC addresses from the router.

BUT

Q2. someone told me a router reset would reenable all mac addresses. Is this so?
Then this method would be useless because the children would soon figure it out and sneak down to the router and press the reset button. Cannot physically stop them doing that because the door to the living room is not lockable.


Moving the router to our bedroom would stop them resetting the router during the night, but this would require a lot or recabling - house Virgin access point to router and desktop pcs to the router and that is too big job for me and might even impact speed or performance.
So, I want to leave the Superhub in the living room where it is now to feed the desktop PCs on the ground floor and maybe use another router/modem with the Superhub in modem mode for wifi access to the second floor assuming the other router/modem supports MAC address filtering. The house is getting 120mbs Virgin broadband and I would not want to lose wifi performance by using an unsuitable router/modem.

Q3. would this method make it harder/impossible for the children to unblock their wifi and continue during the night?
Q4. if so, what router/modem should I get?


Q5. any other ways to do the blocking?


Ken

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Q1: You want to block access to your children's laptops but don't have access to your children's laptops? Sounds fishy. MAC address blocking is not reliable. Anyone can arbitrarily change the MAC address to anything they like once they realise theirs is blocked. They could easily change it to be identical to yours, so that you can't block them at all without blocking yourself

Q2. Yes.

Q3. Depends how intelligent these "children" are.

Q5. Change the password.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

there are various ways to do it, you could assign static ip's to their macs and then restrict access to the ip addresses, but anything you do is going to be at the router level which will be overcome by a reset. If you can't enforce some sensible rules and provide a suitable deterrent against a router reset then I would suggest you take your childrens laptops away from them and teach them a lesson. It is appalling behaviour to think that if they cant have things their way then they just defy your wishes and reset the router anyway. There is a suitable emoticon for this somewhere :bsmack:

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

first port of call is to have a proper sit down with your children and talk to them about acceptable use. treat the computer use as a trust exercise and sell it as that. do not chair the talk as though you are telling them off either - talk to them in a manner akin to the level of maturity you wish them to act at. if they prove they can be trusted, reward them. don't go straight into punishing them by blocking their access - this will only serve as a catalyst into defying you or actively seeking out ways in which to circumvent your efforts to stop them doing whatever.

if you still find you get yourself to a point where you need to assert an authoritative stamp on the situation, buy a cheap router and set it up for wifi for the kids using a separate SSID and password. change the password on your normal wifi and do not tell them what it is. give them access to the new router. then at night, unplug it and put it in your room. job done. they will have no wifi they can connect to.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

quite easy.
Tell them that if you catch them doing it again you will remove the laptops when you go to bed.
My two sons both understood that a computer was a privilege and not a right, if they stepped outside the rules they lost the item for a period of time.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Just a thought. Are you able to change the WiFi password? That way they would not be able to connect.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

It gets increasingly more difficult the more the children know about commuters and there are workarounds for everything.

You can limit access to MAC addresses only but these can be changed on a PC, of the kids are at this level of knowledge then the best way maybe to change the WiFi password each night but that could be a right pain.

Even this can be get round by resetting the route and the default password is then in use again.

Ideally they should not have admin rights to the PC to limit what they can do, the router I use limits the use of the internet to certain macs addresses at certain times.

One hour before bedtime it goes off not on again until later in the afternoon.

HTH

Jamie

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

The OP wanted to stop his kids from surfing at night.
The info is relevant.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

sometimes the best answer isn't necessarily where you think you should look for it. help/advice was offered above and beyond the request. surely people shouldn't be reprimanded for trying to help based on experience? I hope that this forum is here to help others where they can be helped, especially by others who have first hand experience of a situation. it would be a shame to start limiting responses based solely around word-for-word questions. how could we possibly encourage further assistance or debate if we were to do that? the OP doesn't need to take heed to the additional advice offered. I would expect people are able to filter out those comments not applicable or required.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Many thanks for responses.

When the children did their GCSEs we did not have this problem. They had to be in bed 10 in the night to get enough sleep to be in school at 8 in the morning every school day. Now they are doing the A-levels and most of the time their classes start late morning or after lunch, which means they can usually get 6-7 hours even when they surf in the middle of the night. They claim most children of their age do this using laptops, tablets or smart phones playing facebook, twitter etc for hours. That may be so, but I am against it because they are not getting good quality sleep at regular hours. I tell them to read books or do some sport, but they prefer social networking, watching movies on their laptops. I want to reduce this; the first step is stopping the late night Internet usage.

The children have used PCs and laptops for at least 6 years and know how to look for things on the Internet, installing/uninstalling Windows and Ubuntu, dual-booting etc. If I put some parental-control software on their laptops they would know how to uninstall it or just reinstall the OS, so control by software is not going to work either.

The children are 17 and 18 years and I don't think confiscating their laptops during the night is appropriate. They would just continue using their smart phones. Confiscating these too would cause daily wars and friction. They need their laptops and smart phones everyday, but not in the middle of the night.

From what I understand a router reset restores default values in the router including login and password and WIFI password so the children can easily continue surfing after pressing the router reset button and changing the wifi password on their laptops to the default.
I can physically stop a router reset by fitting a lock on the living room door or putting the router in a (bird) cage with padlock.

Idi Banashapan suggests using an additional router/modem for the wifi for the children and physically remove it and keep it in our bedroom during the night.

Q6. there is only one coax cable coming into the house and that plugs into the Superhub.
How would I connect a second router to the coax cable? and would the Superhub and the additional router be able to work in parallel without getting the data mixed up?

Ken

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

I suspect you put the superhub in modem mode (which disables the wireless on it among other things) and then plug the additional router in to one of it's ethernet ports. Then everyone connects to the wireless on that router. So the Coax still only goes in to the superhub.

You may have to set the additional router to have it's gateway as the IP of the superhub. Not 100% sure but that should be all that is needed.

P.S: Hope I make it out of this thread alive, seems dangerous to post here :p:

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

I would suggest keeping your setup as is, but add in the additional router purely for the use of the children to connect to. Do not put the Superhub in modem mode.

You can set up the additional router by plugging it into the Superhub via it's WAN port (the port you would ordinarily plug into the internet on the additional router plugs into any LAN port on the Superhub) and set the gateway of the the additional router to be the Superhub. This allows you to then set up the additional router as it's own network - that is to say, it can be used to distribute DHCP addresses and have a separate SSID (wireless name) meaning you can segregate the children's devices from the rest of the home. This means you can control the device the children connect to completely independently from the superhub, which everyone else uses. You can then remove the additional router at night time, meaning none of the children's devices will have an internet connection, provided you change the Superhub's wireless password and don't tell them what it is.

so your setup would be something like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...es/network.jpg

Do consider these likely 'get-arounds';

1) they could tether their phones to their laptops
2) they can still plug their machines directly into the superhub

There are a number of routers out there now that have built in parental controls, allowing you to restrict usage times from particular devices.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Alternatively you can get a hub that does guest Wi-Fi access, and set this up as a timed access and parental controls. The Asus router I use is really good.

Still doesn't get around the problem that a simple reset of the super hub and or router will set everything back to default.

J

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Some router have access restrictions that can be set, for parents to restrict child access.

If you have a smart phone there is a good little app called Fing which tells you what is being connected to router, and will help you ID your kids MACs.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Fing is great. Interesting to see what hardware is connected to some public hotspots too, including places like hospitals...

Back to the original subject, does rebooting the Superhub really make it lose all it's settings or are we talking about a factory reset which is a bit more involved? Factory resets I know would wipe everything and can be done with most routers but it's not something many know how to do. Maybe we are over-thinking the situation.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Rebooting doesn't erase anything.

---------- Post added at 22:12 ---------- Previous post was at 21:59 ----------

Sorry but if you kids cannot respect your rules about using the web, then take away their kit for a number days.

My sister did when my niece broke the rules.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

We're not allowed to give parenting advice.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

well the technical information is that if your children are whix kids then there isn't anything you can do which they aren't going to overcome in 5 minutes if they really want to.

Sooooo, yes it does come down to parenting advice and how the problem can be approached from a different angle.

Something to think about though. Rather than exacerbating the issue why not try and let it run it's course. Teenagers have fads and go through fazes and atm they'll think it is a cool thing to do because everyone else is doing it and it isnt something they have done before. As with everything though, there will come a time when it isn't a novelty anymore and it will seem normal and they'll revert back to using it as and when they need to. An anaolgy is facebook. When I first joined back in 2009 everyone I knew was going nuts about trying to add the universe to their friends list and there were two people I knew who had over 2000 people on their friends list and everyone else I knew was in the hundreds. I didn't get it at the time and I stuck to my measely 52 friends :) Something seemed to click in 2012 and people started to see sense and started pruning their friends lists and only having proper friends who they wanted to talk to on it. The moral of the story is that the 50 million people on your friends list went out of fashion (although it did take 3 years)

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

True, but taking away kit solves the problem.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

I know and I agree. I've already said my bit.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Would like to try idi banashapan's suggestion plugging in a second router into an ethernet port of the Superhub 2 router and use that for the children's wifi only and the Superhub for the other home devices.

Have been with Virgin since 2008 and used the hub installed by the virgin technician, so I have no knowledge about other more advanced use of the the hub.

Q7. in idi banashapan's reply post #14 one sentence reads:
"set the gateway of the the additional router to be the Superhub."
How do I do this?

Q8. after having set the gateway for the second router to the Superhub, how do I set parameters for it?
(for the superhub I would type 192.168.0.1 from Firefox/Chrome address line for this).

Q9. have no second router at the moment - any recommendations what to buy for this usage?

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

I don't want to sound like a misery, and I'm probably missing something, but in this scenario what's to stop the kids from resetting the Superhub and connecting to its wireless?

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Pauls9 wrote:
"I don't want to sound like a misery, and I'm probably missing something, but in this scenario what's to stop the kids from resetting the Superhub and connecting to its wireless?"

Nothing. As far as I understand any blocking at the Superhub router level can be undone by a router reset and software parent controls can always be easily undone by software uninstall or OS reinstall.

Router-level blocking + physical protection of the router by lock and key would probably work, for example by putting router in locked room/cage. Any other way of physical protection of resets (but not squirting superglue into pin-reset hole!)?

I like idi banashapan's suggestion because it does not rely on setting IP or MAC addresses as far as I understand.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

You don't need to do any special settings with regards to the default gateway. All you need to do is use the second router as a wireless access point and you can configure the ssid and password etc on it like you did with the shub. The shub will hand out the ip addresses for the devices via dhcp and all the devices will use the shub as the default gateway.
As it is for your children you might not want to spend oodles on another router and might consider getting one second hand off ebay but as a nice all around I would suggest this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-EA27...linksys+ea2700

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

He's already concerned about the kids' ability to reset the Superhub and bypass any restrictions set on it. The idea of another router and/or modem mode does nothing to get around this. It is no better than the Superhub itself.

---------- Post added at 20:01 ---------- Previous post was at 20:01 ----------

This.

---------- Post added at 20:02 ---------- Previous post was at 20:01 ----------

Also, this.

There is simply no technical solution that is possible on VM that cannot be defeated by a single push of the Superhub's reset button. If VM allowed you to replace the modem itself, then perhaps there might be.

The only solution is
a) Remove the Superhub
b) Deal with the problem non-technically.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

agreed

also, what has been said regarding the shub and the reset even when using my option is absolutely correct. there is no real fool-proof software based solution to the issue at hand. it really does boil down to the 2 points above. the second one getting my vote.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Children AGED 17 AND 18 ? Kids aged 17 and 18 ? Am i missing the point here ? you can join the army/navy aged 16 .... Do we have children and kids in the army/navy ?

the issue here is not passwords or routers


Sounds like you need to earn some respect from your CHILDREN and there you have it....problem solved

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Have been using google to find out about Parental Controls for Internet usage and Internet addiction. There is a lot available about this and about software products. Here is a small random sample:

Internet and Computer Addiction: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatment.htm
link:http://www.helpguide.org/mental/inte..._addiction.htm

How do I stop my child using the laptop between 9pm and 9am
link: uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100920030335AAE6E21

How to Avoid Internet Addiction: 11 Steps (with Pictures)
link: http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Internet-Addiction

How to Stop Spending Too Much Time Online: 26 Steps.html
link: http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Spending...ch-Time-Online

How to Stop Your Child's Computer Addiction: 15 Steps
link: http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Your-Chi...uter-Addiction

Teens and the Internet: How Much Is Too Much?
link: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ch-is-too-much

Reading these and other articles on the net confirms that our children or anyone using the Internet and smart phones like they have become Internet addicts and that this addiction have become a big problem in many househods all over the world. For example, too many youngsters in South Korea would sit playing online games until they pass out and fall off the chair.

It is difficult to heal an addict just by talking. Actions are needed, for example:

1. Content control

Use software to block the most addictive sites completely or restrict usage.
For younger children, say 5-13, of course also completely block adult content sites, sites inspiring violence etc unsuitable content.

Today CNN reported that two 12-year old school girls stabbed a classmate 19 times and left her for dead having been inspired/obsessed by watching 'Slender Man' that is moving around killing and spreading horror. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...r-9480386.html. Ghastly.

2. Timed access control

Control when Internet access is allowed or by time quota to reduce daily usage

3. Confiscate gadget for a period of time

Might work with younger children, but is likely to cause daily quarrels with teenagers or young adults (17-19).


So, conficating our children's devices is not suitable. Will start by Timed access control to stop access during the night using the Superhub only. They may not discover the reset to unblock, or may realise we (the parents) would immediately detect they have tampered with the reset. They do not know the router login and password and cannot erase the evidence by restoring the normal wifi password.

Will see how it goes and report in this thread.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Seems to me that parents have the right to parent their children especially at the point they are supporting them financially whilst they get the qualifications that will set them up for the future.I can assure you that respect will follow at a later date when said children realise the importance of their parents input into their lives.After all far better to have parents who care rather than the average couldn't give a toss sort I so often saw during my teaching career.

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Given that most people on average continue getting financial support from their parents until past the age of 30, that may take a while...

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Just make a home made wifi jammer and problem solved. Might also take your neighbours out if you live in close proximity, as well as there being a few laws about messing with frequencies. But it's a cool gadget and you know you want one :D

Re: How to stop WIFI access to/from selected laptops/PCs?
 

Problem with that is it's hard to make a jammer that can cover the entire 2.4 and 5.2Ghz frequency bands without significant collateral damage.