Help finding a parental wireless router

[McMike7]

Howdy,

Amidst the sea of routers and parent control devices, I am having a hard time actually narrowing down and evaluating what might work for me. So, I wrote a fairly specific set of criteria of what I do and do not want.

What I want: Wifi router that has user-friendly parental controls for history and bedtime shutoff, and is compatible with my Centurylink modem/router setup.


Prerequisite

1. Need one that can connect to the ethernet port of my Centurylink C3000A modem, as its connection to the internet, since the Centurylink modem is pretty useless as a parent router, but that's what I've got to work with.


Features desired:

2. The two desired functions are service interruption/bedtime mode, and browsing history review.

3. Also user-friendly and quick admin interface for going in an toggling the service suspension.


Also desired:

4. Decent speed.

5. Decent coverage of a small three story house.

6. Ability to separately manage individual devices.

7. Ability to quickly log in as admin and toggle internet suspension on/off for individual devices.

8. Access granular browsing history, sorted by the device connected.

9. Be able to bypass entirely for parent's devices.


Would also be nice to:

10. Manage from an Iphone.

11. Manage from anywhere, not just while on the network.

12. Allow more than one admin access.

13. Cannot be defeated by stealth browsing mode.


Prefer not to:

14. Pay monthly fees and pricey up-sells.

15. Have this turn into yet one more device that tracks everything my family does and reports it to a database.


Don't really need:

16. Content filtering.

17. Specific site blocking.

#15 is probably a lost cause no matter what I get.


I came across the Gryphon that checks a lot of boxes, esp. #7. But I am not sure about #1 with this. Also worried about #4 & #5 for the Gryphon. Frankly, the Gryphon seems on the surface like a good fit, but something in my spidey-sense gives me the heebie-jeebies about it. I am concerned that I will end up needing to buy three units to cover my house, only to end up ensnared in yet another device that consumes my time with care and feeding, while it silently conspires with my TV and fridge to up-sell me and my kids at every possible moment.


Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

[Greg72]

Any Router will work behind a ISP provided Gateway. The only issue is that your kids will just connect to another AP that is available, such as the neighbors.

Decent Coverage and a three story house is not that simple. Plenty of options out there, you first need to figure out your budget, if you want to use a router such as the ASUS line that allows for asuswrt Merlin.

You want a lot but need to slow down and realize that there is no such thing as an electronic parent.

https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/4-steps-to-managing-your-childs-screen-time/

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/01/07/parents-teens-and-digital-monitoring/

https://www.abundantmama.com/letting-children-make-decisions-and-mistakes/

 

[McMike7]

Any Router will work behind a ISP provided Gateway.

You want a lot but need to slow down and realize that there is no such thing as an electronic parent.
/

Thanks for the reply

By the gateway comment, does that mean that basically any wireless router can be attached to my existing modem's ethernet port?

Thanks for the resources on parenting, it's probably outside the scope of a reply I can type here.

Suffice to say, I think parents should be proactive in engaging with children's internet activity exactly as they would alcohol or drugs or sex or driving - which is to say it is important, ubiquitous, potentially addictive and dangerous, and a part of growing up into adulthood under the care, mentoring, and occasional discipline of an adult.

Unlike drinking and drugs; however, inappropriate or merely excessive internet use and abuse is particularly easy to do and very easy to hide, it is an omnipresent distraction, a minefield of good and bad without literally any moderating adult presence, a relentless temptation deliberately created to be addictive, every bit as cigarettes were designed and marketed to do so. And so just as parents have an obligation to serve as a moderating presence with respect to drinking, so too do they with computer use. I do not intend to leave my children fully unsupervised on the internet any more than I would allow them to attend a keg party at a parent-less house.

Our personal family values are that excessive computer use leads to excessive passivity, and subtle seductive eventual replacement of other creative and active activities, and its a massive temptation for those kids with a predilection to distractability. We also believe it is unsuitable in large doses or certain formats to developing minds in terms of how the brains get wired and re-wired.

However, the character of computer use - intertwined as it is with the worthless and worse aspects available equally along with the schoolwork, and enrichment opportunities for research, and yes games and entertainment - is such that light-touch monitoring and gentle mediation is exceptionally difficult to achieve without literally looking over your child's shoulder the entire time. So, many parents surrender or abdicate in the face of that challenge, and do nothing at all.

If my child circumvents our agreed upon system, i.e. using the neighbor's router, that's easy. Game over. Sharpen your pencil bubba, you just earned a month of doing homework old-school, and computer access at the dining room table only during specified hours.
​

oops. I wrote a long reply anyway. ;-)

So, that said. yes, I am asking a lot on the technical specifications standpoint. But on the parenting side, my goals are modest:

• I want to be able to tell my child that their browsing history is subject to review. And mean it. And be able to do it.
  
• I want to be able to easily turn off the internet at appointed and selective times. Remove the option from the conversation. No arguing about "one more video", or "oops I forgot to start my homework", or whatever. Plan for it. deal with it. That bugger goes off at diner time, at 9 pm, and on sunny Saturday mornings. *click*

Thanks again.

 

[Greg72]

It takes talking to them and building trust. Trying to replace being a parent with an electronic overlord does not work.

 

[McMike7]

It takes talking to them and building trust. Trying to replace being a parent with an electronic overlord does not work.

Being able to review browsing history if we choose to, and to turn off the internet when we chose, particularly in the context of conversations and trust building, is far from being an "overlord".

Thanks for the reply.

 

[dave14305]

This is really what the security versus privacy debate is all about. In your instance it's a parent trying to keep honest kids honest. In society, it's citizens not wanting government monitoring them. The more secure (and encrypted) our web and DNS traffic gets, the harder it is to monitor (as a parent, or police, or spies).

I settle on being able to monitor the DNS queries sent to the router to know where my kids are surfing (do people still call it web surfing?). But since most sites enable HTTPS, I'll never know exactly what they're doing on those sites.

 

[McMike7]

This is really what the security versus privacy debate is all about. In your instance it's a parent trying to keep honest kids honest. In society, it's citizens not wanting government monitoring them. The more secure (and encrypted) our web and DNS traffic gets, the harder it is to monitor (as a parent, or police, or spies).

Well, until the kids defeat me at Yorktown, it's not a democracy. ;-)

To me, the internet is like that kid in High School who's parents seemed to always be traveling out of town somewhere. That's were you went to get into trouble. And everybody who went there pushed a little more boundaries and got into a little more trouble than they did elsewhere.

 

[degrub]

MAC address assigned IP addresses can help until they learn how to spoof mac addresses. That plus blocking all mismatches and unknown IPs. Then it is simply a matter of firewall rules based on time of day for restricting access. This can result in headaches when friends visit as you must become IT Network response guru at odd times of day and night. Oh, and dont travel far away unless you want to open your isp and your router to remote admin access. Not a good idea in general.

And then there are the 02:00 “ can you turn the internet on so i can finish my school project that is due tomorrow “ legitimate request....

Work with them and help them learn. Start early. A shared pc in public area may work best. But then there are the smart phones.....

 

[McMike7]

And then there are the 02:00 “ can you turn the internet on so i can finish my school project that is due tomorrow “ legitimate request....

Thanks. 'zactly where I do not want to be.

That's where the Gryphon seems attractive, at least at initial glance. User-friendly interface, access from anywhere on your phone app, etc. But probably overkill.

 

[Val D.]

It takes talking to them and building trust. Trying to replace being a parent with an electronic overlord does not work.

Best advice. Nothing else to add to this subject.
No matter what limiting and monitoring tech you put in use:

- it is only temporary
- it will have significant negative effect over time
- the kids will stop trusting you for other things in life also

Just limit adult content for young kids so they don't see accidentally something they don't have to and forget about it.
Grown up kids will learn whatever they need or don't need from school and you don't have any control over this process.

 

[McMike7]

Well this has turned into a debate about parenting. Which is of course the third third rail of conversations, after politics and religion.

Suffice to say we will have to agree to disagree. Some parents choose to throw unsupervised keg parties for kids in their basement under the theory that "better in my house" than someone else's. Some parents would rather not. Some parents heavily rely on videos to placate their very young children at home, some do not. Who's to say what's "right."

But at least with kegs, there's mechanisms to slow the flow: from ID requirements at liquor stores, to police patrolling the roads, to parents who talk to each other about where there kids are, to parents who wait for the kid to come home and judge whether they're drunk. With computer use: not so much.

It's interesting, Val D recommeneds putting on a content filter. Which is one item I'm not that focused on, because that's something I can't follow my kids around and protect them from at all times. I am merely interested in setting up a culture and environment where a parental presence is established for computer use in the home, just like it was a keg party.

There's actually a fair amount of developmental science that points to the presence of adult oversight as an important element in appropriate development, and while growing kids chafe at it verbally, they in fact want and need it (in the right doses at the right time). For a popular example: consider Lord of the Flies, or watch what any group of adolescent boys do when they think no one is watching.

 

[Val D.]

Well this has turned into a debate about parenting.

You are free to do whatever you decide is right. I already shared here on SNB some experience with a friend of mine (link below). He is not a technical person, I just did what he wanted me to do. The results were not pretty. The older the kids are, the bigger the issues expected. And some content filtering is definitely needed for kids younger than 8-10 years. I don't know the age of your kids, but I believe you are more focused on time scheduling and monitoring. The first one is easy, many routers have build-in tools for that. You don't need a trigger button, just set it once and make it a daily routine. No Internet after 10pm, for example, weekends after 11pm. For the second one... what's the plan? Are you going to review 30 pages of URL addresses every evening?

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/parental-controls-needed.59448/#post-518639

 

[McMike7]

YFor the second one... what's the plan? Are you going to review 30 pages of URL addresses every evening?

Thanks for the link. It highlights the concern that brought me to this page initially: that the user-friendly options I have come across are in fact possibly accompanied by performance issues, up-selling fees, and not as effective as advertised.

As for your question, I have no plan to page through URLs daily. I only plan to have the credible ability to do so, and inform my kids of that capacity. In other words, to assure them that there might be an adult in the room and so behave accordingly.

 

[Val D.]

As for your question, I have no plan to page through URLs daily. I only plan to have the credible ability to do so, and inform my kids of that capacity. In other words, to assure them that there might be an adult in the room and so behave accordingly.

The Police station is down the road and they usually arrive in 3 minutes... kind of deal. OK, but your experiment may work, may not. You are going to invest money to find out. And if your kids have data enabled mobile devices in their hands the plan won't work. If your kids are tech savvy, don't be surprised to find VPN and Proxy addresses in your log files. The Police has to arrive every evening before bed time to seize the equipment, you know.

By the way, once you setup your home FBI system, are you going to inform your wife and your guests about your secret powers?

 

[McMike7]

By the way, once you setup your home FBI system, are you going to inform your wife and your guests about your secret powers?

i feel sorry for you

 

[Val D.]

i feel sorry for you

No worries...

A sticker on your door "Attention, I can log and review everything you do on my WiFi" will be good enough. It is going to cut down your log in half, so less work for you. This thread reminds me of another a few months ago. Someone else was asking how to play FBI on his network. But you probably already know that person.

Good luck!

 

[McMike7]

Good luck!

Friend, you are an angry internet troll pushing unwanted "advice" and lecturing and insulting strangers about parenting on a technology board. No mystery why you have a jaded view about relationships with kids or issues with how to be an effective adult.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Well this has turned into a debate about parenting. Which is of course the third third rail of conversations, after politics and religion.

Indeed. It seems that every time someone asks for help with a technical aspect of parental controls it's inevitability met with unwanted "parenting advice". Advice from complete strangers that know nothing about you, your family or your particular situation and probably have different values. But still they feel that their views and opinions are "better" than yours and you need to learn from their infinite wisdom. So there seems to be a delusion with some people that just because they've procreated it's magically transformed them into more of an expert in parenting than any other parent.

 

[dave14305]

So there seems to be a delusion with some people that just because they've procreated it's magically transformed them into more of an expert in parenting than any other parent.

It only made me slightly better at procreating. Just one of those things you have to keep on practicing...

 

[ColinTaylor]

It only made me slightly better at procreating. Just one of those things you have to keep on practicing...

Woody Allen:

Countess Alexandrovna: You are the greatest lover I've ever had.
Boris: Well, I practice a lot when I'm alone.