How to block a particular website through a router
There are several reasons why you might need to block a particular website. Most people decide to do this to prevent the devices from accessing pornographic, suspicious or harmful websites. At the same time, parents need this to force children to stay away from social networking sites and entertainment services during the study period. Blocking sites, in general, is a very useful feature in many cases to control the open Internet, which is why it has become inseparable from modern routers; Instead of requiring the user to block websites from each device separately, this feature can now be activated from the router itself and the ban is applied to all connected devices, whether computers or smartphones. Below we explain how to do it in easy steps.
How to block sites through Router
Keep in mind initially that there is more than one way to block websites from the router. If you only want to block porn and malicious websites, then you can just change your DNS settings and add a dedicated server. Whereas if you want to block only specific sites on the Internet, you can either turn on Access Control or Parental Control (the names vary depending on the type of router) both of which allow network administrators to set specific access policies for devices connected to the router, whether for children, employees, or whatever.
Parental Control
In this explanation, we will adopt the Parental Control feature, as it has now become one of the leading options in any new router - regardless of its price. So, before proceeding with the next steps, make sure that the router you are currently using supports this Parental Control feature.
Enabling Parental Control requires access to the router's web interface, where all the elements and options for controlling network settings or router properties are located. To do this, launch the Internet browser on your computer, and then type in the search bar the IP address of the router. Mostly this address is 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 but since it is not static, you will need to follow the steps below on Windows to find out the correct IP address for your router:
- Press the Win key + R together to open the Run window.
- Type "CMD" and press Enter.
- At the command prompt, type "ipconfig" and press Enter.
- Scroll down to the Default Gateway pane where the router's IP address appears.
After typing this IP into the browser, press the Enter key to access the router's web interface. But before controlling the settings, you have to log in first; Where you will be asked to type your user name and password, and in some cases, it may only ask for the password. At this point, try to use "admin" as your username and password, as it is the default password for logging in to any router.
Parental control website blocker
Once you are logged into the router's web page, you can easily access the Parental Control feature through the menu on the left side of the main page. However, the access method may vary with different web destinations for multiple routers and even the specific model of each type.
So if you're sure your router supports parental control features, look closely at this control page to find where you can enable Parental Control and add specific restrictions on connected devices. Note that in most cases you will find this feature enabled by default, and if it is not, you can click on the button in front of Status to activate it
Add the devices you want to block
After Parental Control is enabled, you can first start adding devices that you want to prevent from accessing websites. Note that you will need to add each device separately. For that, press the Add button and enter the device data such as the name and its MAC address.
On most routers, the “View Existing Devices” option will appear, which allows you to see a list of devices that are currently connected to the router so that you can easily select the ones you want to add. But if you have to type this data manually, after typing the name and MAC address, write a brief description of the connected device, in the Description field.
Block access to sites at all times
An essential part of the parental control feature is that you specify the periods to restrict access, in other words when you want to apply this restriction to the device you are adding. The method of setting the time intervals varies according to the web interface of the router as well; You may find that you can specify the days of the weeks and then choose the times from a drop-down list, or by selecting cells as in the TP-Link interface.
After clicking on the clock icon in front of "Effective Time" to set the period, simply click on the area representing when the blocking is applied or drag your mouse pointer over the appropriate cell(s). And if you want to block access to websites at all times, you can simply mark all the cells as green. After that, press the OK button and then OK again to add the device to the list of devices to which parental control restrictions apply.
How to fill the "Davises Under Barenthal Control" list
This step can take a lot of time, as you need to populate the "Devices Under Parental Controls" list with all the devices you want to block from accessing the sites. In case you want to include all devices authorized to access your network, do the same for each device separately.
After you're done adding devices, it's time to select the sites you want to block. In the Parental Controls feature, you will find a dedicated menu for adding websites and restricting access to them by specific devices. On the TP-Link router, this menu is called Content Restriction, but on some other routers, it is called URL Filter or Website Filter.
Blacklist to block
Before you start typing the names of the sites, you might want to change the type of the list: Is it a blacklist so that all sites included in it are inaccessible, or a whitelist so that only all sites under it are allowed to access while Any other website is blocked.
In my case, I will choose Blacklist to block certain websites only. Next, press the Add a New Keyword button and type the name of the site you want to block and its domain like facebook.com or youtube.com, and don't type the full site URL as Parental Controls will not accept the blocking of Facebook if you add [https:/// www.facebook.com/] in the list. When you have added all the sites you want to block, hit the Save button to apply these changes.
From now on, devices under the Parental Control list will not be able to access the websites you have set in the Content Restriction list as the browser will show "This site can't be reached" on every attempt to access those sites, while they can browse other sites Freely.
Block URL
This is all about blocking a specific site on the network through the router, it is an effective way to control the content that the devices connected to your network are allowed to access. But again, using this method varies from one router to another, and it probably won't work for you as long as Parental Control is not supported on your router.
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