I’m not sure about everyone else but I developed an internal webserver at home, just for use internally at home. Our? son is 8 yrs old and even has his own homepage with links to educational sites such as pbskids.org or edheads.org. On one of my earlier blog posts I described how I re-purposed an old Pentium II into a webserver which is running LINUX distro UBUNTU Jaunty. I am also using this old PC as a proxy and internet content filter server. I configured the browsers on our son’s PC to use the proxy and content filter to prevent access to unwanted and dangerous websites.
The reason I am creating this post is because our son figured out how to bypass the proxy through his browser, he was sneaky and saw me do it one time. So I am going to describe how I removed his internet access through third party firmware on my router requiring him to keep his browser pointing to the proxy, otherwise there will be no internet access even to his favorite children websites.
I have the LINUX-based Linksys Cisco router WRT54GL. One of the major pros about this router is the ability to install third party firmware enabling you to expand the useful possibilities of your router and perform tweaking outside of stock specs. The firmware I have installed is called Tomato. It’s actually one of the popular ones with decent documentation and support, which is why I chose it.
I started off only blocking unwanted sites by simply pointing our son’s browser to the proxy, which is only good if they do not know how to change it in the browser internet connection settings, which he found out. So the next step would be to block from hardware level, the router. What I needed was to block his access to internet but still allow him access to sites that I approve. If you are using the Tomato firmware you can accomplish this by configuring the Access Restriction setting from the GUI.
- * Access your router IP through the browser.
- * Sign into your administrator page
- * Click on Access Restriction from the menu.
- * On the Access Restrictions page select the appropriate settings on what days and time you want the restrictions to occur.
- * Under the Applies to drop menu select option called “The Following…” . This will allow you to apply your settings to specific ip’s rather than everyone on your network.
- * In the box labeled as MAC/IP Address enter the IP of the computer you want to perform access restrictions against.
If you uncheck the box labeled as “Unblock all internet access“, a new set of options appear below it allowing you to block specific ports and services such as torrents.
After you are satisfied with your settings click the Save button at the bottom of the page. That’s it! ..It’s that simple using Tomato firmware. What I did was block all internet access from our son’s computer IP. Then kept his internet browser pointed to the proxy server. If he removes/bypasses the proxy setting from his browser through the Internet Options (I.E.) or Advanced > Connection Settings (Firefox), he will not be able to access any internet. The page just clocks and eventually times out. If he keeps the proxy settings in his browser he will be able to access the websites that I approved for him to access as defined in the web content filter.
.. gr8 article concering locking down your internet for your kids. Its good the program is not named pickle,, lol! Very interesting and easy ways to lock down and protect our children from the predators that lurk on the internet.
Cheers