Do you think it’s easy to tell your kids not to surf the internet after 7PM? Well, we all know telling your children not to do something doesn’t meant they will actually stop doing it. Luckily, thanks to the Parental control features built-in in most modern wireless routers today abiding to this rule is quite easy.
According to experts, children have to stop using their smartphones, tablets and similar a few hours before bed time in order to have a good, healthy sleep time. So, the feature known as Time scheduling in wireless routers, is something every parent will gladly use and make sure the house rules remain strict.
In the following paragraphs we are going to discuss this feature in Asus wireless routers. The Parental Controls in them will easily allow you to enable or disable your Internet connection during specific hours, times of the day or days of the week. So, in case your child has its own wireless device (laptop, tablet, smartphone) in its room you can be sure you are in control.
Before you start
Before you start configuring the Parental Controls, make sure to get the following:
- Your router’s default IP
- Default username and password
- MAC address of the devices you want to limit
How to enable Time scheduling
As you will see in a minute, setting up Time Scheduling in your Asus router is quite easy.
First of all you have to login to your Asus router settings page. You can either do this by typing http://router.asus.com or via the default Asus login IP address.
Type the IP address (or click the link above) in the browser’s address bar and enter the login details which can be found in your owner’s manual or on a label under the router.
Once you log in, select AirProtection, and after that Parental Controls.
After that take a look at the Client List. Here you have to locate the MAC address of the desired device either automatically if it was connected before or type it manually. The next step is to select the plus on the Add/Delete column to add the device. And then in Time Management, click the pencil icon.
There you can choose the time you want the specified device to be able to be online and click OK to confirm.
Once you confirm this option the assigned device won’t be able to surf the Internet. In simple words, the Internet on that device will stop working.
As you can see, it wasn’t that difficult. However, there is one important question here:
Can my kids bypass the Parental Controls?
Well, since the Time management feature is MAC address based, and the mac address can’t be changed that easily we have to say that this feature is quite resistant to your kids. To change the MAC address you or your kid will have to change the network adapter on the device it is using or spoof the MAC address using special software.
So, in general there is a possibility to trick the Time management feature in your Asus router but it’s quite difficult.
We hope you will find this article useful and maybe try this feature if you intend to limit the screen time for your kids. The main thing is to check your wireless router settings and chances are it already has a similar feature you haven’t thought of.
