Thoughts on combining wifi, subnets, parental controls & NAS

[Trip]

I've got a SOHO client project coming up and looking for ideas on how to approach. The client wants: massive wifi dead-spot relief, self-service parental controls on the children's traffic, private and guest networks and a NAS serving both the kids and adults. Some key requirements: easy access for grown-ups' endpoints -- ie. not having to manually whitelist, and any pro-level gear is set-and-forget, while end-user stuff (parental controls, wifi passwords, etc.) is reachable and usable (enough).

I've cased out the silver-bullet products (Luma, all-in-ones), but they seem to fall short in whatever category, so I'm envisioning a multi-part solution. Here's one version: VLAN-enabled access traffic from L2 smart switch(es) and perhaps Open-Mesh APs, aggregating on a managed core switch, which sends adult VLAN traffic straight to the CPE router and child VLAN traffic to a Torch (or similar), whose WAN interface then connects to the CPE router. The NAS will be dual-NIC to the core switch and VLAN-matched to serve both child and adult subnets.

How feasible does that sound? Any red flags / better approaches?

Thanks in advance.

 

[thiggins]

Did you look at Orbi? It uses OpenDNS for parental controls, but that may not meet your criteria.
New firmware added guest network support.

 

[Trip]

Looked at it, and it looks decent, but falls a bit short on parental control compared to Torch or the like. I was waiting on guest network support, though -- thanks for that update. Now it would be much more feasible to run Orbi (in AP mode) to a central switch, then to a Torch. Just concerned about having the parental control router handling the entire network, but will have to investigate more with Torch support. Not having to policy-route traffic up 2 separate paths to the router (via pricey L3 switch, or UBNT/MikroTik) would obviously keep things way simpler and less expensive, so hopefully that combo will work. Thanks for the input, Tim!

 

[sfx2000]

Did you look at Orbi? It uses OpenDNS for parental controls, but that may not meet your criteria.
New firmware added guest network support.

Maybe Orbi along with OpenDNS, and then bring in a Circle (or similar) as a belt and suspenders approach..

Parental controls is always a tough situation from the network side - one size does not fit all there - might be a good business case to develop client side apps for Android/iOS and a managed service from there (similar to what Enterprise Mobile Device Management does for the corporate setting)