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Forum Discussion
Parental Controls works only on first day, on second day onwards leaves everything open
Hi!
I used to have a DGN2200. I had configured it to work with OpenDNS and parental controls had been working fine.
Then I upgraded to D6000 about six months ago. This router has parental controls integrated in it so that they are easier to configure. However, they don't work -- at least not for me.
Whenever I configure parental controls (custom filter that blocks p*rn*graphy) they work for a few hours. Then, usually on the next day, they don't work; sites that were banned on the previous day are fully available on the next day. If I reconfigure parental controls then I observe the same cycle being repeated; they work on the first day, but not on the second day onwards.
My impression is that OpenDNS is not getting updated with the new dynamic IP of my router which gets changed every morning by my ISP. If this impression is correct, then my next guess is that this because with the D6000 I am suing the same OpenDNS accound as the one I was using with the DGN2200 (I specified the same email address when setting up the D6000, and so the old account was picked up). I considered using a different OpenDNS account, but there is no way to do this via Genie. I deleted my account on OpenDNS so that it would be forced to open a new account for me, but it seems that the old account was just hidden (rather than fully removed) and it is still using it. Of course, I could be wrong and the cause could be something completely different. The issue remains, though, that for some reason parent controls are not working after a day or so.
Can you please help me resolve this?
Thanks,
Alexander
11 Replies
Hi Amfitritis,
1. What is the firmware version of the device?
2. Did you setup Parental Controls using your existing account through the NETGEAR Genie app/program?
3. Do the DNS values on the device UI remain as the OpenDNS values (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220)?
4. Are configuring the filtering levels through https://netgear.opendns.com/sign_in.php?
5. Have you tried setting the filtering levels through the NETGEAR Genie app/program?
Regards,
Dexter
Community Team
Hi Dexter,
Thanks for responding to my post :-)
1. What is the firmware version of the device?
V1.0.0.59_1.0.1
2. Did you setup Parental Controls using your existing account through the NETGEAR Genie app/program?
Yes. IIRC I specified the same email address when setting up, and this resulted in my existing account being automatically picked up. I don't remember being offered an option to use an existing account or to create a new one.
3. Do the DNS values on the device UI remain as the OpenDNS values (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220)?
No, DNS is set to "Get Automatically from ISP". I didn't configure these manually as I was not instructed to do so during setup. Since parental controls do work for about a day whenever I change some value (such as the categories being filtered), I assumed that it is not necessary to do so. Should I change the DNS IPs to these?
4. Are configuring the filtering levels through https://netgear.opendns.com/sign_in.php
Yes.
5. Have you tried setting the filtering levels through the NETGEAR Genie app/program?
Not sure how to do that. It always redirects to OpenDNS. Note that I am using a custom filtering level.
Thanks,
Alexander
Just FYI, I changed DNS to "Use These DNS Servers" which pointed to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (which are the correct IPs for OpenDNS, although they are non-configurable on the UI), I performed a ipconfig /flushdns, and also cleared FF's history, but this didn't help as sites that should have been banned are still accessible.
Note that this router is on a dynamic IP.
Thanks,
Alexander
