Managed switch recommendation please.

[bathslug]

We were lucky enough to get one of Virgin's new and shiny (apparently) hub 5's a short while ago and I was hoping it would come with better software to allow me to limit access for the kids regarding bed times etc. How wrong I was as it still suffers from the same issues of "forgetting" whats been set occasionally thus requiring the rules to be deleted and re-done.

I've about had enough of this now and the accountant has said I can finally get a managed switch to take over this task as she is fed up of me "going on about it" . All I want to do is basically get something that will just shut off a port between x and y time if possible rather than mac address filtering or the like although if that is going to be my only real option so be it.

This switch will sit between the router and the kids wired up rooms, it doesn't require poe as I have a small poe switch already for my Unifi AP and I'm not to spend too much, therefore based on what I need and want to do what do those in the know recommend?

Ah yes one thing to bare in mind is that this needs to be gui based as I've no knowledge of console commands .

Many thanks.

 

[On Holiday]

HUAWEI AX3 AX3000 - £25
or
HUAWEI WiFi WS5200 - £15

Both have got decent enough features for limiting access as you need. I've just set-up both of the above for that task.

 

[JohnStewart]

I had similar requirements and found that not all managed switches have time based access policies. I also needed one that allowed port security to restrict specific ports to a MAC address to prevent MAC address spoofing or plugging in devices into other ports in the house. If you only need gigabit speeds, there are plenty of older rack mountable enterprise level switches available on Ebay at reasonable prices.

I had tried various parental controls over the years and ultimately there are ways around most of them, including doing factory resets on devices so they still behave normally with no obvious changes until you try to log into the device to find the password has changed

I ended up with a Zyxel XS1930-10 which has 8x 10G ports and 2x 10G SFP+ ports, but is overkill for most domestic environments. It does however have the ability to restrict bandwidth on a time based schedule for specific ports or VLANs which I found more effective than cutting off access altogether as the port still has internet access, but is unbearably slow to use and make streaming video, playing games etc. next to impossible. With no access at all, it’s obvious there are restrictions in place, but slow access at a certain time is “just down to the scheduled cloud backups taking place when everyone should be sleeping”