Network access control on a timer?

April 10, 2009 8:35 AM

Network access control on a timer?

I'm looking for the most effective/efficient way to control access to the network at certain times of the day/week. What I want to do is essentially people logging onto the network at most times just simply get Internet access, but at certain time periods of each day the users would become restricted and not be able to access the Internet any longer. Instead, I'd like to have them redirected to a page telling them why they can't reach the Internet and when they will be able to again. The time frames change on different days of the week as well, so it isn't the same times every day.

I was thinking a linux machine with a proxy server that gets turned on/off by cron or something along those lines. I am looking for suggestion on if that is the best way to do it, or if maybe there are some more simple or elegant solutions to this problem out there.

If it helps, the application is a school environment where certain times of the day Internet access needs to be restricted, i.e. study hall time, late at night, etc.

posted by doomtop to computers & internet (3 comments total)

If you're just restricting web traffic, Squid is the ticket. You can tie rulesets/ACLs to specific times of day. See: http://www.deckle.co.za/squid-users-guide/Access_Control_and_Access_Control_Operators#Current_day.2Ftime

A friend uses this in his office to restrict access to social networking sites in his office, except during lunch.
posted by kableh at 9:04 AM on April 10

Quite a few cheapish routers can do most of what you want (I'm not sure about the directing them to a special page part). Try pulling down the user manuals for a few?

OpenDNS.com is great for blocking/monitoring - but doesn't do the schedule thing that you need.
posted by Xhris at 12:56 PM on April 10

ddwrt firmware for the wrt54g does this, either for individual machines or for the whole network. How many machines are you talking about? What sort of networking hardware do you already have in place?
posted by cosmicbandito at 4:56 PM on April 10