Parental Controls Suggestions

Model: Orbi RBKE963B (not available above in "Model") (WiFi 6E)

It was suggested I list the following suggestions here:

As a longtime Circle user (7+ years), here are my thoughts:

THE BIGGEST SHORTFALL OF BOTH: The guest network is not covered. At the LEAST, there should be an ability to have generic controls over the guest network. At BEST, parental controls would follow a device to the guest network. As it is, all a child has to do is change networks to have unfiltered content. Sure, the VPN will cover a mobile device, but not a computer or something like a ROKU. This makes using a guest network completely undoable if you have parental controls. If Netgear changes that, that would be a very large selling point over Circle. As a result, we can't put the kid's friends on a guest network, or even have one, as it would be too easy for the kids to pick up the password from someone.

Features I miss on Netgear Parental Controls vs Circle:

1. History by device. Both have history by group, but Circle also showed history by device, which was VERY useful.
2. Rewards for more items; specifically, the ability to "reward" a later bedtime, or an "award" to disable off-time. As it is, on Netgear, you have to change the bedtime or disable the off-time, both of which can be easy to forget to change back hours later.

I switched from Circle because it was slowing down our network, and there were frustrating conflicts. I'm happy with both areas after switching to your product.

One oddity is when blocking Netflix on a Roku (Maybe others? Netflix was the only app I blocked), the Roku says it's not connected, but when hitting "Procceed Anyway," it would connect. When sitting idle, you could see the network disconnecting and reconnecting. This was on all Roku's (I have 6). Deleting the block solved the issue. This took some time to figure out!

But again, I'm happy enough with the product that I switched from Circle.