Does TimeBlock work for anyone?

There is one wireless device that I need to block from 10pm until 6am. 

The first night, it seemed to work fine.  Now it doesn’t seem to work at all.  The ‘blocked’ device is still connected and working after the 10pm cutoff.

It is fine if I just use a MAC filter.  I.e. the device can’t connect at that point.

The block is set to ‘all’ for every time period between 10pm and 5:59am.  The rest of the times are set to ‘none.’

This is very frustrating, and I’ll have to return this router if it is unable to perform this simple task.

I do have the latest firmware (1.05.12).

Also, I realize that an external website is used for parental control setup, but I imagine the settings are sent to the router at some point, and that the router doesn’t have to constantly communicate with the external site to enfornce Parental Controls?  I can’t seem to find any good info explaining exactaly how this system works.  It seems unnecessary, but I imagine it’s related to the filtering aspect.

Hi, you can try doing a power cycle, if that doesn’t work review the steps on page 60 of the manual. 

http://wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705072.pdf

I’ve had similar frustrations with Parental Controls but here are some things that helped me:

After changing the settings at the external parental controls setting site, I’ve noticed a slight delay before they become effective; maybe a couple of minutes.  

On my daughter’s PC, I couldn’t get her specific user filtering to take effect although the master filtering settings took effect with no additional action on my part, very soon after saving them.  But with her PC, I tried user-specific fitler settings:  TimeBlock was set to “All” for every time block (to effectively block all internet access at her PC) but then I overrode that under SafeBlock to allow only a few sites needed for school work.  After several iterations of saving the settings under TimeBlock and SafeBlock, it still allowed full internet access.  Finally, I tested with a MAC filter and she was disconnected from the network (her PC uses a wireless connection if it matters), so I knew the MAC address that was registered in Parental Controls was valid for her PC.  But when I re-connected her PC to the wireless network, her blocking took effect and I couldn’t see any sites except those in her SiteBlock “allow” list.

I also had my (wired) PC registered in Parental Controls for testing a SafeBlock and TimeBLock list.  At one point, I set my PC’s TimeBlock to ALL to see if it would disable access and it didn’t right away but did several minutes later (can’t remember if I did anything in between).  Anyway, from the external Parental Controls page I removed my PC from the list of registered devices but it still blocked all access.  It still showed me as having a registered device in the router’s Parental Controls page (even after refreshing the page), so I unchecked it there and saved, and then my PC went back to having access to the web again.  So it seems with UNregistering devices, that doing something on the local router side seems to update the external controls site but not necessarily vice-versa.

I also had the master filter set to Low and was unable to access some “questionable” sites on my PC.  ;-)  After resetting all time blocks to None, I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the the network (disable/enable PC network adapter) but it wouldn’t let me in.  After about 5 - 10 minutes (I was answering some emails and not changing the router setup), I could finally access any site again.  So this seems to indicate there is some (fairly significant and not consisten) delay in saving parental control settings and when they start taking effect.

I, too, would like to know how the system works internally.  As you asked, does the router constantly have to access the cloud for the master/user filter settings with every web request?  That would seem like a lot of overhead so I’m hoping once you make the changes there is some type of router-based database that is updated so all filter settings are truly local.

Also noticed that rebooting the router speeds up the process of activating new block settings.  Perhaps it forces a local “reload” of the settings in the router from the external web site.