Time Schedule for Internet access at router level based on MAC Address

Question

Complete newbie here.

I have a Huawei HG658c (Standard Vodafone Ireland) router and I am looking to set a Time Schedule for internet access to certain devices (Kids) on my network, also I currently use OpenDNS on my router to block unwanted sites.

I now have a complete list of MAC address for each and every device on my network. I was shocked to find that we have 17 devices connected most of the time.

I have went through all the setting on the router's admin page, however the only security setting I can find is to create a Black/White list for MAC address, but no Time Schedule option. So not really what I am after.

I wonder would this be possible using my current router, i.e. via the firewall settings? if so, any advice would be much appreciated.

Or if I could install some software on the router that would allow me to add the restrictions I am after. again, any advice would be much appreciated.

If not, and I need to go down the new router route, then could anyone recommend to me a good router that will have the functionality build in to achieve what I am after.

Thank you in advance, I look forward to hearing your advice.

Best regards

VC

Answer 1

This is possible, but will require some work and skill on your part. You can write a script to add/remove the MACs from the black list. Then you can run the script via a cronjob. This will require you to have some sort of Linux on your network. If you don't have a linux or OSX machine, then you can use Cygwin or a Virtual Linux machine, e.g. VirtualBox.

There are several possible ways to write the script depending on your programming skill. If it were me, I'd write a simple http client in Perl using LWP::UserAgent.

If you're unfamiliar with Perl, then a simple method would be to use the text-based lynx browser. With lynx, you can do just about anything a standard browser can do, and automate it. There are two command-line options to lynx that you will need:

-cmd_log=FILENAME
write keystroke commands and related information to the specified file.

-cmd_script=FILENAME
read keystroke commands from the specified file. You can use the data written using the -cmd_log option. Lynx will ignore other information which the command-logging may have written to the logfile. (see the manpage for more details).

So the idea is to run lynx -cmd_log=bedtime and then manually do what you need to do in order to add the MAC's to the blacklist. Then run lynx -cmd_log=playtime and then manually do what you need to do in order to remove the MACs from the blacklist. Once you have these two scripts, you can test to see if they work by running lynx -cmd_script=bedtime and lynx -cmd_script=playtime. You'll probably have to make some edits to the scripts and possibly change the default configuration of lynx a little bit. For example, you might need to use the -accept_all_cookies option.

Once you have those scripts working, you can add them to a cronjob to be run on whatever schedule you'd like.