ZyXEL parental controls:
The software solutions reviewed in this
story protect the PCs they are installed on. But if you have a home
network with, say, two PCs you want to protect, you'll need to buy and
install the software twice, set the preferences twice, manage two copies
of the software, and keep two copies up to date.
Router vendors may have found a simpler and more
affordable approach. Linksys and ZyXEL have both partnered with online
parental-control services—Netopia and Cerberian, respectively—to offer a
single point of protection right in your router, protecting all the
systems on your network. Rather than locking users to specific systems
with content filtering enabled, the routers let users log on to any PC
on the network and get their individual permissions applied. And if
multiple users share a single system, the log-on technique ensures that
the filtering options are customized for the current user.
For this story, we looked at two routers that recently
shipped: the Linksys WRT54GS wireless router and the ZyXEL HomeSafe
Parental Control Gateway model HS-100W. Linksys charges $39.95 for a
one-year subscription to Netopia, and ZyXEL charges $34.99 for Cerberian—not
too bad for solutions that protect your entire network. The networking
and administration features of both of these routers work quite well,
but we focused our testing specifically on the devices' parental
controls.
When configuring the routers, each user is assigned a
profile, such as child, young teen, mature teen, or adult. You can
customize Web site category restrictions for each profile and set
restrictions for each user. We preferred ZyXEL's more complete list of
site categories, though some users might prefer the simplicity of
Linksys's smaller list.
ZyXEL's parental-control options are managed locally
in the router's admin screens. The router handles user log-on
validation, time-of-day rules, and restrictions on e-mail and IM. Only
the Web-filtering capabilities require you to connect to Cerberian. This
means that even if Cerberian went down, some basic restrictions would
remain enabled. The Linksys unit, on the other hand, requires that
Linksys's online servers validate user log-ons and enforce other basic
options, such as time and application restrictions. During testing, the
Linksys servers became temporarily inaccessible, disabling all the
parental controls. But despite a few problems, both solutions were
generally reliable and delivered excellent content filtering and access
restrictions.
Both Netopia and Cerberian rate millions of Web sites
for content. When a user attempts to access a Web site, the router sends
a request to the online service. The service then sends back a rating,
and the router either permits or rejects access based on the user's
permissions. Generally, this background interaction isn't noticeable,
though the Linksys router was a bit sluggish when displaying rejection
messages. Overall, we were satisfied with the site-blocking capabilities
offer both services.
Unfortunately, the routers are missing a few features
that the software solutions include, such as extensive keyword
filtering. While keywords can be entered manually into the ZyXEL router,
it's a tedious process. The routers also lack monitoring features.
Linksys offers more flexible IM controls than ZyXEL, letting you block
sessions or specify trusted contacts. Linksys provides similar controls
for e-mail filtering, where the ZyXEL unit can only turn off e-mail or
limit when it can be accessed.
Linksys also provides more detailed reporting
capabilities than ZyXEL, with easily navigable surfing, IM, and e-mail
usage reports. Only ZyXEL, however, allows reports to be e-mailed to
designated recipients.
Centralizing parental controls within routers is a
good idea; it works well, and it's cost-effective. Although most users
would be satisfied with the options these routers offer, they lack
certain features some parents will consider essential.
