Parental Controls - Is it possible to block a specific website from a specific computer via router?

[northbear]

Quick question to see if anyone knows if this is possible.

I am looking to block a specific website(s) from a specific computer (ie specific mac address) on the network using a router. I am currently running AsusWrt Merlin firmware on a RT-AC56U router.

Parental controls let you block a "category" ie "Adult", "Instant Message and Communication" etc (see http://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1008720/) But I can not see how to block a specific website directly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[pete y testing]

Quick question to see if anyone knows if this is possible.

I am looking to block a specific website(s) from a specific computer (ie specific mac address) on the network using a router. I am currently running AsusWrt Merlin firmware on a RT-AC56U router.

Parental controls let you block a "category" ie "Adult", "Instant Message and Communication" etc (see http://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1008720/) But I can not see how to block a specific website directly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

if you want that level of control use the firewall rules as parental control is just the lazy mans way of firewall access control

 

[northbear]

if you want that level of control use the firewall rules as parental control is just the lazy mans way of firewall access control

Thanks for the suggestion! But when I looked at firewall controls it would only let me block website for the entire network rather then block for just one computer.

 

[sfx2000]

if you want that level of control use the firewall rules as parental control is just the lazy mans way of firewall access control

I agree - there's never a really good answer here from a network perspective...

And parental control is a touch-point that will evoke a lot of opinions one way or the other...

 

[northbear]

If I am reading the information on the links below correctly it appears that tomato may be able to do what I am looking for

https://learntomato.com/how-to-block-internet-access-with-tomato-router/

http://r3dux.org/2009/12/how-to-blo...sites-from-your-router-using-tomato-firmware/

Not sure if this method on tomato can block https websites (note the "s" on the http)

Am I correct that Asus Merlin does not have this same function? I have used Tomato in the past and liked it, but I really the look, feel, speed etc of Merlin and so don't want to jump back to Tomato unless I really need to!

 

[Gitsum]

You could use/edit the hosts file on the computer that you don't want accessing the specific web site.

 

[john9527]

Regarding tomato support....if you want to get a headache try reading through this thread ....
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.ph...ccess-restriction-block-https-websites.45988/

 

[snakebite3]

Quick question to see if anyone knows if this is possible.

I am looking to block a specific website(s) from a specific computer (ie specific mac address) on the network using a router. I am currently running AsusWrt Merlin firmware on a RT-AC56U router.

Parental controls let you block a "category" ie "Adult", "Instant Message and Communication" etc (see http://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1008720/) But I can not see how to block a specific website directly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

You can use OpenDNS home in DNS filtering. Open an account and put the website you want to block and use DNS filter to direct that PC to OpenDNS home.

 

[northbear]

Regarding tomato support....if you want to get a headache try reading through this thread ....
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.ph...ccess-restriction-block-https-websites.45988/

Read it for a while then got numb. TL;DR version: https is tricky to block and as of this thread from 2012 does not look possible with Tomato.

You can use OpenDNS home in DNS filtering. Open an account and put the website you want to block and use DNS filter to direct that PC to OpenDNS home.

I am currently using OpenDNS for on the router for the entire network.... I suppose I could setup a different account just for that one computer, maybe? I should look into that a bit more....

 

[snakebite3]

I am currently using OpenDNS for on the router for the entire network.... I suppose I could setup a different account just for that one computer, maybe? I should look into that a bit more....

I wouldn't know how that would work. OpenDNS account works by IP. I use a different DNS my entire network.

You can try to just mess with that computer. You won't need to do the DNS thing.

Another thing you could do is if that website is unsecure/unconpressed(http) you can block it from the entire network using URL filter in the firewall settings.

 

[Lost Dog]

Quick question to see if anyone knows if this is possible.

I am looking to block a specific website(s) from a specific computer (ie specific mac address) on the network using a router. I am currently running AsusWrt Merlin firmware on a RT-AC56U router.

Parental controls let you block a "category" ie "Adult", "Instant Message and Communication" etc (see http://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1008720/) But I can not see how to block a specific website directly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

This might be a bit dated but check out this thread:

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/need-help-with-custom-dns-per-dhcp-client.14486/#post-96227

I believe you could modify this to specify websites but it would be easier to direct this to opendns and use that for your filtering.

 

[RASG]

Quick question to see if anyone knows if this is possible.

I am looking to block a specific website(s) from a specific computer (ie specific mac address) on the network using a router. I am currently running AsusWrt Merlin firmware on a RT-AC56U router.

Parental controls let you block a "category" ie "Adult", "Instant Message and Communication" etc (see http://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1008720/) But I can not see how to block a specific website directly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

I have something similar to what you want.
All you have to do is:

1- set up your own dns
i have dnsmasq running on my ac66u router

2- configure it to respond to queries with 127.0.0.1 or any other invalid ip
or even better
install and configure pixelserv - it works with https too
there is a step-by-step guide here

3- configure your device - cell phone, tablet, pc, etc - to use the above dns
(i have iptables rules on the router to do that, so i dont have to configure the device itself)

4- profit

 

[Gitsum]

Editing the hosts file is quick and simple. You only have to do it on the one computer. No need messing around with DNS servers and stuff.

 

[northbear]

Thanks for all the suggestions! For blocking specific websites constantly for the entire network I use OpenDNS and it works great.

I should probably be a bit more specific in what I would ideally like to do . I would like to block access to a list of websites based on the day of the week or time of day etc, but leave them accessible other times. Actually more the reverse of that. Block all of the internet except for a whitelist of allowed websites for certain days/ times. But then also be able to easily grant access to the full internet as needed. I currently use a Chrome extension for this but this can easily be defeated disabling or deleting the extension. Also it would be nice to change these settings from a different computer which is why I was looking at seeing if it could be done via the router.

Can some computers on the same network use one DNS and others use a second DNS server? That may be an option if it could change based on time of day or easily. It can be complicated to setup, but would need to be easy to switch "on" and "off".

 

[RASG]

Can some computers on the same network use one DNS and others use a second DNS server? That may be an option if it could change based on time of day or easily. It can be complicated to setup, but would need to be easy to switch "on" and "off".

yes. that is exactly what i suggested on my post #12