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Get to know the advanced parental control of the D-Link EAGLE PRO AI R15 router

Once we are inside, we will be able to see the different blocked website messages, we have a total of four different messages that we will be able to edit at any time:

  • Manual pause control of the Internet connection. We can edit the message and indicate that Internet access has been temporarily paused by your parents.
  • Filtering through a website. We can edit the message and indicate that access to this website is prohibited.
  • Personalized program. In this message we can indicate that the Internet connection has been temporarily interrupted.
  • Bedtime program. In this message we can say that it is time to sleep and there is no Internet connection for those specific devices.

The D-Link firmware will allow us to configure the personalized message for the four cases, in addition, we have a “Preview this message” button that will automatically open a new tab and show us the message that would be shown to minors who they are controlled. We also have the possibility of loading the default message, without having to restore the router to factory settings.

The default message of the manual control of pausing the Internet connection appeared like this:

We have edited it and we have put the following, we can put the headline and message that we want.

As you can see, if we scroll we can see both the personalized program and the bedtime program. Depending on what we are going to use and the type, one message or another will appear.

Once we have correctly configured the messages that will appear to minors, we are now going to configure the different blocks.

Setting up schedules, websites, and devices

In the main menu, if we click on “Create profile” we will be able to add a new profile, in this menu is where we must configure the parental control of this wireless router in detail. The first thing we must do is add a profile name, it is recommended that it be a descriptive name, if we have several children we could create a profile for each of our children, adjusting to their age and our requirements. We must remember that we can create up to 12 profiles at most, so giving each profile the name of our child is a good way to describe the configured profile.

In the “Programming” section is where we have the three types of programming available in this router:

  • Allow Internet access time: in this option we have the possibility of pausing or resuming the Internet connection based on a specific schedule that we establish, from Monday to Sunday, and it will allow us to configure with an approximation of 5 minutes, that is, we can configure the time slots of 5 minutes in 5 minutes. Other less advanced routers only allow 15 minutes in 15 minutes and even only for hours.
  • Block internet access during bedtime: in this case we can configure the bedtime of different days, if you try to connect at this time, you will automatically get a message indicating that you have been blocked by the bedtime program.
  • Allow limited access: In this scenario, both Internet access time and content are limited through the website filter that we can configure.

In the following image you can see all the available options:

At the bottom is where we will be able to add up to 24 websites to block them, we can directly add the URLs to block. We will also have the list of devices that apply to this profile, we will be able to add a maximum of up to 24 devices to use this parental control profile.

In the section of “Allow Internet access time» We will be able to configure the schedule in detail, as we have explained previously. The yellow strip means allow access to the Internet, and the rest are not allowed access, in addition, here we can also see the configuration of the bedtime program, to give an overview of the allowed time.

In the section of “Block Internet access during bedtime” we can see the parental control settings from Monday to Sunday, we define the pause time and also the time to resume the next day. We would also have the possibility of adding several bedtime programs, to have a different schedule on weekends, for example.

As for website filtering, it is the weak point of this parental control because it only allows us to add up to 24 rules. Our recommendation is that you use DNS servers that are responsible for filtering all adult content and also malware, with the aim of protecting the minors in our house as best as possible. It is very important and very useful to use these DNS services, moreover, most of them are free. We also recommend that you try the NextDNS service, because you can limit everything you want in a fairly advanced way.

As for the devices to add, we simply have to click on “Add device” and choose it, it will automatically appear in the “Selected devices” section, which should be the devices of our minors.

Once everything is configured, at the top right we click on “Save” to have the changes saved and ready. Now we will get a summary of the configured profile, the devices involved and the status of the filtering that we have just created. If we create more profiles, they will also appear in this configuration menu:

In the event that you try to access the Internet right now, it will indicate that Internet access has been paused, or the message that we have previously configured in the “Configuration” section.

As you can see, the parental control of this D-Link EAGLE PRO AI R15 router is quite complete, especially at the time level, to allow or deny Internet access whenever we want. At the level of content control, we can only add a total of 24 rules, however, we can solve this using DNS-based parental control such as OpenDNS, and even Cloudflare (primary DNS: 1.1.1.3; secondary DNS: 1.0 .0.3), of course, you shouldn’t forget the service provided by NextDNS either, which is very advanced and recommended for filtering web content.

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