More info on Parental Controls on My Net routers?

[gerrygadget]

I saw that the new My Net routers have a Parental Controls feature.  The WD product web pages barely say anything, and the product manuals I found on the support site had a little bit more about it, but not a lot.  I was eventually able to tie part of it back to a company/technology called NetSTAR.  Even so, I think it would be worth having more information about this feature.  For many families, this alone might be the reason to purchase the product. 

I very much like the idea of having robust Parental Controls at the router level.  I've worked with a Windows-based product that was reasonable, but it doesn't work with other devices like set-top media boxes, smartphones, game consoles, tablets, and Linux-based computers.  It also interfered with iTunes at the network stack layer (actually Apple's fault, not theirs, but a problem nonetheless)  I've also tried a DNS-based solution, and it wasn't configurable enough and not aggressive enough so some content was being let through that it shouldn't have.

Please provide more information on the product pages about this feature and what it can do.  If it looks good, I'll probably buy one to replace an older router.

[Alucardx23]

I agree, the parental control option is great, WD should do more to promote it.

[Tinwarble]

Information about Parental Controls can be found in the User manual here:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705074.pdf (this is for the N900C, but should be the same for all)

Page 62

[Adonis]

Thanks for your advice to put more information regarding parental control.  We will work with our Marketing Communication and see how we can improve to give more information this via our web sites and other means of communication. 

In the meantime, please be advised of these features.

WD Internet Security & Parental Control is a router-based dynamic web filtering service.  It blocks undesirable Internet contents for safety of your family members and network devices.

-  Keep your family safe from undesirable and unsafe web sites    

-  Customizable for each device in your network by setting filtering level and time block individually    

- Web based management makes it accessible from any place around the world    

- Filters up to 90 categories of internet contents    

- Global categorization database - covering over 1.5 billion URLs    

- Real-time dynamic filtering

[I_am_a_Ninja]

ill make it easy 4 u:

1-if u dont want any computer at home to go into facebook at all, the mynet parenthal control can let u do that

2- if you dont want your kids to go on fb on their computer, but u wanna go on fb on ur computer...you can do that too.

3- if your kids got good grades and u want to let them go on fb, but not after 10pm cuz they should go to bed, the my net can do that too

thats basically what parenthal control can do, block sites on a master level (all devices/computers), host level (each device or computer sepparately), or block using a time frame  (i. e, from 3 pm until 6 pm,or from 10 pm until the next day, etc)

[Pobby]

Is it also possible to block facebook through https access or from smartphones?

I heard that url filtering works only for http access, but not for secured access (https).