Is There an Easy Way to Block Devices?

[tsteadham]

Bottom line: I'm using Untangle at home and am looking for an easy and efficient way to block internet access to my kids' devices on the fly (for example, if they aren't doing their chores...its time for dinner...that sort of thing).

Rest of the story:
I'm new to Untangle...still on the 14 day trial. I have my home network setup and split into several vlans. My kids have devices that they pretty much only use themselves and I have assigned each device for each kid a username...bill...bob...tom....that sort of thing to identify all of Bill's devices, etc.

I can set a firewall rule to something like "if username is Bob then block" and it works well. Problem is, I have to open a web browser, navigate to the untangle UI, go to the firewall rule, and a few clicks later enable it and save it and then do it all over again when I want to unblock it.

There's got to be a better way. Perhaps a script to write a json file to enable/disable the rule that can be run on a smartphone? I've never done that so I'm not sure where to start.

Any thoughts? Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance!!

[NuX]

I understand your frustration. I don't know if this is easy/hard/indifferent. I have not messed with Untangled API's yet. its on my list todo. Here's what I've been able to find previously; https://apidocs.untangle.com/, like I have said I haven't played with it. but looking at the page, it appears they did an awesome job documenting the api's. They have examples with curl. I wish every company provided examples.

Regarding the smart phone, I really can't provide much advice for developing apps on them. My only experience is with android, and the app was basic.. it just vibrated.. and caused my friends phone to restart. oops. Maybe I should have done a Try/Catch.

Just recently, my garage door clicker died. I had a Raspberry PI and some Relay's. Wrote a program to flip the Relay Open/Close to kick the garage door open/close. Wrapped it up in a WebPage.. w/ a big button. and I accessed it via my iPhone browser. Maybe you could do something similar to have the capability on your Phone? idk..

[jayinva]

See this post from sky-knight. https://forums.untangle.com/ng-firew...tml#post248267

[sky-knight]

Yep, to what I do!

Hit your devices tab, find all the devices that belong to each kid and stuff their name in the username box. I keep them all lowercase just for ease, because it is case sensitive.

Once all the devices are named, you can set policies based on username!

There's a bit of work getting all the devices tagged, and a bit more getting all the policies built, and the rules to use the policies based on username. But once it's all done, you can just put the kid's name in the policy rule you need and get ready for the tears to flow.

There's a bit more detail in the above linked post, if you have any questions I'll be around.

[Marty_B]

Yep, to what I do!

Hit your devices tab, find all the devices that belong to each kid and stuff their name in the username box. I keep them all lowercase just for ease, because it is case sensitive.

Once all the devices are named, you can set policies based on username!

There's a bit of work getting all the devices tagged, and a bit more getting all the policies built, and the rules to use the policies based on username. But once it's all done, you can just put the kid's name in the policy rule you need and get ready for the tears to flow.

There's a bit more detail in the above linked post, if you have any questions I'll be around.

That is exactly how I manage my grand-kid's devices. I also have an after-hours policy that blocks internet after 10:00pm for the kids devices.

[NuX]

All great suggestions. not what the op was asking. "There's got to be a better way. Perhaps a script to write a json file to enable/disable the rule that can be run on a smartphone? I've never done that so I'm not sure where to start."

[sky-knight]

All great suggestions. not what the op was asking. "There's got to be a better way. Perhaps a script to write a json file to enable/disable the rule that can be run on a smartphone? I've never done that so I'm not sure where to start."

That would interpret this request as being, I need a red button on my phone that can put my kids into a lock box at a touch.

And no, Untangle doesn't do that. There are some command line manipulations that might simulate some of this, but the cleanest option supported is to have policy rules disabled, and simply tick the appropriate rule on when you need it. This could be done via a phone easily enough too, because all you're doing is logging in and checking a box and hitting save.

[Kyawa]

If your kids are using wifi, download th Fing app.