How to disable WiFi while keeping Ethernet enabled?

At my house, the kids all use WiFi, while the adults use Ethernet. I want to let the adults use the Internet at any hour, while denying access to the kids at 9:30 PM. I also want to keep them off in the morning until half an hour after wake-up time.

The adults are connected to the router via Ethernet (using 3 of the 4 slots on the router), and the 4th port is open so that we can connect a Blu-Ray player in a different room (this is meant to be annoying, because it shouldn't happen very often).

Is there a way to disable WiFi between 9:30 and the morning? I'd prefer an easily implemented and flexible software solution, rather than using a timer or some similar solution.

Using NetGear WGR614v7 Wireless Router and WinXPsp3.

WallyPoP

Posted 2013-02-02T23:57:17.950

Reputation: 19

1Which router are you using. Depending on the model and the OS it is running it might be as simple as sending a single command to turn WiFi on or off. (Or even to add that command to cron). – Hennes – 2013-02-03T00:16:10.360

If you open your browser, go to http://www.routerlogin.net and login using admin and password (or whatever you changed it to), then under Advanced / Wireless Settings do you see an option to Turn off wireless signal by schedule?

– Karan – 2013-02-03T01:08:06.310

Answers

Looking at the manual, it seems that your best automated option would be to configure the ip addresses so that the children's are in a range that excludes those of the adults. You can block a range of ip addresses on a schedule but it doesn't look like you can disable wifi by schedule.

Eric Roper

Posted 2013-02-02T23:57:17.950

Reputation: 326

This should work. However, if the kids are aware of the scheme employed they could circumvent it by specifying an IP address in their device. – mtone – 2013-02-03T01:57:28.053

You could lock in the last available ips for the adults and block all other ranges. – Eric Roper – 2013-02-03T02:18:41.657

This will not work on your router, but you might be interested to know that the Tomato custom firmware supports this functionality natively. If things don't end up working (eg. Eric Roper's suggestion), it might be worth investing in a Tomato-supported router.

On Tomato USB, the configuration page looks like this (I'm on an ASUS RT-N16 router):

enter image description here

mtone

Posted 2013-02-02T23:57:17.950

Reputation: 11 230

-1

Workaround:

One can schedule WiFi sleep/shutdown using crontab.

crontab -e 
00 07 * * * wl -i eth1 radio on
30 23 * * * wl -i eth1 radio off

mary-hit

Posted 2013-02-02T23:57:17.950

Reputation: 1