Have Calendar be a Blacklist instead of whitelist?

[thepaintedtiger]

I love the calendar function for being able to control when the internet is functional for different devices.

However, I am having issues with restricting sites. I need to restrict things such as social media, Skype, and YouTube during school hours, but allow pretty much anything else as I cannot anticipate what sites they will need to Google in the course of their studies. If I restrict the profile to commonly used sites such as Duolingo, then nothing else can be done in that time period.

Would it be possible to choose if the calendar entry is sites to be whitelisted OR sites to be blacklisted? Then I can add problem sites to be blacklisted during the time period without affecting searching for topics on Google.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by thepaintedtiger.

[support]

Assume that you want to block youtube.com from 8:00am to 5:00pm, but want to allow it outside that window. And you want to make other sites available all the time. Then you only need to create one calendar: enter youtube.com in the “Sites” box, then enter two time bands: 12:00am-8:00am and 5:00pm-11:59pm. Sites other than youtube.com will be available all the time, because no calendar exists to restrict the time.

Now assume that you want to shutdown the Internet from 11:00pm to 5:00am. You’ll need to create another calendar with an empty “Sites” list, then enter 5:00am-11:00pm as allowed time.

With the above two calendars, no sites will be available from 11:00pm to 5:00am, except youtube.com, which is specifically allowed by the first calendar.

[thepaintedtiger]

It doesn’t seem to work that way.

My calendar time with no sites listed in it allows all the internet (not otherwise blocked on the main profile page). So the times I have listed for that calendar is when the internet is on. The times with no calendar, the internet is off.

The calendar with sites listed will not allow any websites except the sites specifically listed. For example, I included Google.com, so you can search for something, but cannot go to any of the links that come up.

I’m going to include my other issue in another thread.

[support]

Let me phrase it in a different way. Suppose you set up several calendars in a profile. When you enter www.google.com, the router will look for a calendar with www.google.com in it.

– If a calendar is found, it is used to decide whether www.google.com is allowed at the current time.
– If a calendar is not found, the router will look for a calendar with google.com in it. If found, that calendar will be checked.
– If a calendar is not found, the router will look for a calendar with com in it…

In there’s no match, the router will look for a calendar with an empty sites list. If such a calendar exists, it will be used to decide whether www.google.com is allowed at the current time. If such a calendar does not exist, then the site is allowed.

[thepaintedtiger]

That was convoluted, but I get it now, and it works, thank you. I’ll attempt to write it out as I understand it for others not understanding how to set up the calendars.

1. Set up a calendar with no sites listed. Set the times to when you would like the internet on.
2. Set up a calendar for sites you want restricted during certain times. Set the times to be when you want the listed sited ALLOWED.

For example, I want the internet for the children to be on from 8am to 8pm. I have a blank calendar with those times listed. The internet will not work at all outside of that time period.

During our school hours, I wish to restrict them from YouTube, Amazon, and social media. So I have another calendar I labeled Free Time, and it is set to 8am-9am and 4pm-8pm. The sites listed will ONLY be allowed during the times on the calendar.

The only issue is that once a site is on/open, it will not be cut off until the user changes URL’s. So if my son starts watching a video before 9:00am, it will continue until he clicks a different one. I think it would be possible to force it by setting the ‘On’ calendar to be off briefly, but I am monitoring when we start school and will get them on task ‘manually’.

Now that I understand how to use it, I love this router. Whoo-hoo, timed control….something I was not finding in other such routers. I look forward to seeing further development in the firmware.

[support]

An update on Calendar cut-off. The calendar will cut off an existing connection, but there might be a delay up to 5 minutes. So if a child is watching a long video on YouTube, he/she can continue to watch the video for whatever is buffered or go past the time limit for up to 5 minutes, whichever is longer.

[thepaintedtiger]

Oh, fantastic. I’ll have to test that out!

[RichardGV]

I’m really struggling with this. I have set up times when Netflix is allowed. Today, it went over by 55 minutes. Does Netflix under a Chromebook buffer the entire episode? These particular episodes are 42 minutes long, so I don’t see how it allowed 55 minutes over even if it buffers the entire episode. There’s got to be a better way! Perhaps provide a break of some sort so that device has to re-buffer?

[support]

@RichardGV Thank you so much for bringing this up! I’ve created a separate topic for this, in case someone else run into the same problem.

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