After working through some difficulty with parental controls time scheduling on my RT-AC68U tonight, I thought I'd share what I found in case it might save others some time.
I had previously set up parental controls time scheduling with several of our family's devices, but then I had to reset the router to resolve a connection problem. That fixed the connection problem, but I didn't get around to re-figuring out which device was which so that I could set up time scheduling again. We have about 18 devices. Since the kids are on summer vacation from school, time scheduling is not as important right now.
But tonight my wife wanted me to set it up with our TV to discourage kids from sneaking downstairs to watch it in the middle of the night.
I found that the interface for setting up time scheduling was completely different than when I had done it before. But it wasn't too hard to figure out, so I set it up to "Offtime Schedule" 1am - 5am.
Immediately the TV stopped streaming, though it was early evening. I tried reversing it so that "Offtime Schedule" was 5am - 1am. That brought back streaming. With a little digging it appeared to me that "Offtime" meant that disabling was turned off. So you want to schedule "Offtime" for when you want the internet to be available for the device.
That worked until 10pm, when streaming stopped with an error about internet access. I wondered if it could be a time zone problem. Had I set up a time zone with the old interface? I couldn't recall. I looked and the only time zone I found was in Administration/System/Basic Config/Time Zone. It was set on Greenwich Mean Time. I set it for my local time, Pacific time.
That didn't help.
I looked for another time zone everywhere in the interface and found none. I looked in the user manual and found that it spoke of a time zone for each device's schedule. But that's in the context of the old interface, and that time zone does not appear to be there anymore in the new interface.
Then it occurred to me -- 10pm Pacific time is 1am Eastern time. Was the router using Eastern time?
I set the "Offtime" to be 3 hours later -- 8am - 4am. 8am - 4am Eastern time is the same as 5am - 1am Pacific time. But that didn't work either.
Then I wondered, do I need to set the system time back to the default, Greenwich mean time? I tried that and -- it worked!
So .... the takeaways are, for setting up parental controls time scheduling with the new interface:
-- "Offtime" means the time you want internet access to be AVAILABLE for that device. Think of "Off" as meaning turning the disabling off.
-- Leave the system time zone on the default, GREENWICH MEAN TIME. If you need to set it to your local time zone for some other reason, I'm not sure what effect that will have on parental controls time scheduling.
-- Set the schedule for EASTERN TIME ZONE. If you live in Hawaii or Arizona, which do not observe daylight savings time, I think that will mean changing the time schedule twice a year.
Good luck!
I had previously set up parental controls time scheduling with several of our family's devices, but then I had to reset the router to resolve a connection problem. That fixed the connection problem, but I didn't get around to re-figuring out which device was which so that I could set up time scheduling again. We have about 18 devices. Since the kids are on summer vacation from school, time scheduling is not as important right now.
But tonight my wife wanted me to set it up with our TV to discourage kids from sneaking downstairs to watch it in the middle of the night.
I found that the interface for setting up time scheduling was completely different than when I had done it before. But it wasn't too hard to figure out, so I set it up to "Offtime Schedule" 1am - 5am.
Immediately the TV stopped streaming, though it was early evening. I tried reversing it so that "Offtime Schedule" was 5am - 1am. That brought back streaming. With a little digging it appeared to me that "Offtime" meant that disabling was turned off. So you want to schedule "Offtime" for when you want the internet to be available for the device.
That worked until 10pm, when streaming stopped with an error about internet access. I wondered if it could be a time zone problem. Had I set up a time zone with the old interface? I couldn't recall. I looked and the only time zone I found was in Administration/System/Basic Config/Time Zone. It was set on Greenwich Mean Time. I set it for my local time, Pacific time.
That didn't help.
I looked for another time zone everywhere in the interface and found none. I looked in the user manual and found that it spoke of a time zone for each device's schedule. But that's in the context of the old interface, and that time zone does not appear to be there anymore in the new interface.
Then it occurred to me -- 10pm Pacific time is 1am Eastern time. Was the router using Eastern time?
I set the "Offtime" to be 3 hours later -- 8am - 4am. 8am - 4am Eastern time is the same as 5am - 1am Pacific time. But that didn't work either.
Then I wondered, do I need to set the system time back to the default, Greenwich mean time? I tried that and -- it worked!
So .... the takeaways are, for setting up parental controls time scheduling with the new interface:
-- "Offtime" means the time you want internet access to be AVAILABLE for that device. Think of "Off" as meaning turning the disabling off.
-- Leave the system time zone on the default, GREENWICH MEAN TIME. If you need to set it to your local time zone for some other reason, I'm not sure what effect that will have on parental controls time scheduling.
-- Set the schedule for EASTERN TIME ZONE. If you live in Hawaii or Arizona, which do not observe daylight savings time, I think that will mean changing the time schedule twice a year.
Good luck!
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