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Circle on Netgear Router

Ecborden
Aspirant

Circle on Netgear Router

I recently updated my Netgear router to be able to utilize Circle on it.

I have a question about the daily Time limit.  What constitues time on the internet?  I placed my phone on Circle and in the morning while I was sleeping, I apparently had spent 6hr on the internet (Samsung S9).  My son, has an iPhone and Circle is telling me that he has spent 3hr on the internet when I know he has been spending time with me and not browsing, snapchatting etc.  

I suspect that there must be something in the background that we are not aware of that never "disconnects" from the internet.  Looking at useage under my son's phone I have noted that nearly 4hr are logged under Uncategorized and the IP address is not named, just the numbers.  The second most used site is apple.com at over 1hr.  I can't get him to shop for anything more than a few minutes.

 

I only ask this because, if we use a Time Limit, it is important for it to be fair and accurate. 

 

Thank you.

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DexterJB
NETGEAR Moderator

Re: Circle on Netgear Router

Message 2 of 4
Ecborden
Aspirant

Re: Circle on Netgear Router

Thank you Dexter for your feedback.

I have been looking more closely at the sites that are counting time.  Some of them I have put into unmanaged but the sites that are the biggest users of time on line are only presented by their IP address as numbers.  It appears I can't place these in unmanaged mode.  

I have also learned there does appear to be plenty of "background" internet use by wide variety of different sites I never would have dreamed of.  Interesting so may places have access to our devices.  I realize that many of these places are internet distributers etc and are used by the major providers (e.g Google).  This does make it hard however, for something like Circle to acutally count the time that one may actually be on the internet.  This makes it difficult for me to justify using Circle as it doesn't count internet time as the actual time used by someone.  I could set limits to the amount of time to access Youtube, snapchat etc but this doesn't limit the use of a device to say "3hr/day."(or am I wrong?)  I realize that Circle wants to monitor Internet usage but something like "screen time" would make more sense to me, as I don't really care about the internet that is being used in the background, only the time my child is using their phone.  Screen time could be the amount of time the phone screen is lit up for instance.  This seems like a better way to gage how someone is "on their device" than the acutal time spent on the internet.

Is there a way for Circle (using a router) to monitor something like "screen time?"

Thank you.

Message 3 of 4
DexterJB
NETGEAR Moderator

Re: Circle on Netgear Router

Hi @Ecborden,

 

That isn't something Circle is designed for. Screen time is device/hardware specific and can no longer be monitored by the Circle app and/or router since there is no Internet traffic involved. You can try and make sure that the apps or services that are no longer being used are cleared from the memory (by clearing them on multitasking view) or disabling their respective background services.

 

Dexter

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