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Forum Discussion
Circle Parental Controls Don't Work if in AP Mode?
I was excited to see I could put parental controls on the Orbi, but then after loading Circles app and trying to enable it said it didn't work in AP Mode.
As I have a router from my ISP that also provides cable TV I have to use their router in order to see the TV Listings that come in through the Coax connection on the main router.
any ideas on how I can resolve this inability to use parental controls?
P.S. Orbi works well, but disappointed with the limited features to manage on the unit via Admin - many more on the cheaper FIOS router.
2 Replies
At least they can warm about it when changing from router mode to AP mode. I only discovered this after going to AP Mode and now have to go back to router mode.
Technically speaking, since in AP mode we do provide an IP address to Orbi, it really doesn’t seem to be impossible to look at layer 3 packets coming to Orbi. Anyway, i think it is what it is.
The reason, for the parental controls not working in AP mode is, that AP mode doesn't work on layer 3 and thus has no insight into any packets in regards of higher OSI levels, like tcp. In AP mode , the Orbi merely provides a LAN connection, which only communicates on layer 2, like Ethernet, below the tcp/ip protocols. For that, it can't intercept any IP packets - ony a router or some application sniffing the network in promiscous mode is able to do that.