I bought this router (R7800) among others things because it's suppose to have parental controls capabilities. It turn out however, that the Nighthawk app no longer supports Parental Controls and settting up Parental Controls thorough the desktop app does not work - nothing is getting blocked even if I turn the level to High. I'm able to login to the Desktop Genie App, change the levels, read the levels back but notihing is being filtered even though the router setup states that Parental Controls are enabled and the Genie app shows the controls are enbled at leve High.
I also came across some post that suggest to doubel check that my network in not added to OpenDNS when I log in to that website - and it is not.
Any help would be appreciated.
As a side question - what routers truly support parental controls? Because R7800 does not.
Hi @andrew-b, welcome to the community! The R7800 does support LPC (Live Parental Controls) via the desktop Genie app. On the router web UI, please make sure that the DNS values are set to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Also, there are instances wherein the filtering may not immediately take effect since it needs to sync with the OpenDNS servers.
The R7800 does support LPC (Live Parental Controls) via the desktop Genie app. On the router web UI, please make sure that the DNS values are set to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Also, there are instances wherein the filtering may not immediately take effect since it needs to sync with the OpenDNS servers.
@DexterJB thank you for confirming that LPC is still supported. So the ubiquitous questions again:
Why does enabling LPC on the Genie not automatically set the DNS servers right?
How can the users adjust the various devices LPC levels (as Genie can't be used on iOS or Android with these routers anymore)?
How can the users access the LPC/OpenDNS bypass account (as Genie can't be used on iOS or Android with these routers anymore)?
Does the R7800 (and other routers with legacy LPC support) still have the required OpenDNS dynamic updater in place?
Look, we simply can't stop asking this before Netger does add the LPC Parental Support to the Nighthawk App.
Thanks for you notes, but I still cannot get it to work. Here is what I see:
1) In the router setup at http://www.routerlogin.net/index.htm I do see these two DNS servers and a check next to "Use These DNS Servers" so I'm good there (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) and Parental Controls are Enabled on the Home status screen
3) When I go to the deskop Genie app, I do see Parental Controls are Enabled at Filtering Level : High.
4) I also read somewhere to check that my home network is NOT added to my account at https://dashboard.opendns.com/ and it is not, there are no networks in my OpenDNS account.
Still, with all this at Level High nothing is being filtered. Any help would be appreciated.
This is raising (and almost confirming) my suspicion that the functionality required for OpenDNS was removed from Nightawk routers with firmware "enhanced" for alternate parental control systems, such as
(a) configuration of the correct OpenDNS DNS addresses on enabling LPC,
(b) registration of the network (based on the public IP address*) to OpenDNS,
(c) and last but not least also the updater for the changing public IP (most consumer connections don't have static/fixed IP addresses,
are no longer in place. Note: (b) and (c) are done by the very same code AFAIK.
*More and more ISP are deploying Carrier Grade NAT (CGN), so OpenDNS can no longer recognize DNS queries coming from this IP address as yours, because the same IP address is used for thousands of customers. CGN the major show stopper for any kind of services basing on the customer identification based on a unique IP address (and virtually the end for OpenDNS consumer usage...).
For a test (beyond of looking into the CGN part - easy, compare the Google what is my IP address with the IP address shown on your router Internet/WAN port - if this is the same you can continue) you could try manually adding the network on the OpenDNS Dashboard, based on the current public address. If this works - the next problem you might face is that one day your ISP will assign your router a new IP address, and then .... see above.
@ChristineT Once more: I don't find it acceptable that Netgear does has leave the customers using LPC alone in the rain. Even worse, the mantra-like repeating of suspect wrong facts that it does continue to work - it might do so on routers which have not yet been castrated - despite all facts that it can't reliably, and that the Nighthawk App does lack of the LPC-functionality of the Genie App (e.g. parental bypass, DNS config enforcement).
This account doesn't have any Netgear devices associated with it
If you have not yet configured the Live Parental Controls feature on this device please do so with the Management Utility found on the CD that came with your router or download it ....
