Time based DNS settings

AHarvey · 19 Jan 2017 at 19:04

Hi all,

Kind of an odd one.

Windows 7 laptop being used at work. OpenDNS settings to limit what they can and can't visit during work time as there was a lot of time wasting going on.

One girl has agreed to work from home over the weekends and evenings but wants to use the work laptop which has been agreed by management

The problem is, it's having some sort of DNS issue at her home so I've had to take the openDNS settings off, and within an hour was already booking holidays during work hours. :mad:

I need to change the admin account as the old IT guy gave her the password for it and turn off sticky keys, but, is there any way I can automatically set DNS settings depending on time and date or location/IP?

killsta · 19 Jan 2017 at 20:22

DHCP?

DHCP assigns OpenDNS at work, her home router provides normal ISP DNS servers at home?

billyboyd · 19 Jan 2017 at 21:40

Can't help with the DNS but what about taking the old school route?

I don't work now, I have retired but if I was messing about like that I would have been out the door (after a couple of stern warnings).

They are paid and are there to work and if not there are plenty of people out there that will be willing to take their place.

Steveocee · 19 Jan 2017 at 22:36

killsta said:
DHCP?

DHCP assigns OpenDNS at work, her home router provides normal ISP DNS servers at home?

^^^This

Hopefully you aren't but..... If you have put these OpenDNS settings on just her machine then you could be seen as singling her out <insert discrimination accusations here>.
If you employ it across the company via DHCP then you are limiting the problem from the particular employee plus the ones you don't know about AND you won't get accused of discriminating.

When she takes the laptop home then it works fine for her via her home router.

Simple, clean and minimal effort.

AHarvey · 19 Jan 2017 at 23:20

Thanks i'll look into DHCP, it's all a learning curve to me. The main reason I went route of individual machines and changing DNS was because 90% of the laptops in the business are home edition, we have no windows server/group policy etc and there is only the one department we want to block.

And no, it wasn't just hers but the entire call centre.

As for out of the door, they have waste over 260 man hours in the last 3 months on quiz's, and on one day the network was up and down 50/50 for the day, they wasted an hour doing a quiz while it was up. Then I was threatened for mentioning it... #wasteofspaceteam.

Puzzled · 19 Jan 2017 at 23:56

Tbh unless management are pushing you to enforce it then just report that she's still doing it (I'm assuming she has been warned before) and let them deal with it.

That said working from home or in the office managers don't really expect staff to be working flat out all day. Office work in particular tends to have a few productive hours the rest is coffee / smoking breaks, chit chat, pointless meetings and internet browsing.

I think the most unforgivable thing is that she is silly enough to do it on the work laptop, should be browsing the web on her phone or personal laptop.

Steveocee · 21 Jan 2017 at 21:27

AHarvey said:
The main reason I went route of individual machines and changing DNS was because 90% of the laptops in the business are home edition, we have no windows server/group policy etc and there is only the one department we want to block.

So stick said department on their own subnet with their own DHCP server handing out your filtered DNS. You don't need enterprise edition for something so basic as DHCP client.

Django x2 · 22 Jan 2017 at 20:15

Stick her through a VPN. Why you aren't doing that for all traffic is beyond me in this day and age, then you want a quick proxy server to stop the kinds of sites you don't want people using or visiting.

It's pretty simple

Rroff · 22 Jan 2017 at 20:25

billyboyd said:
Can't help with the DNS but what about taking the old school route?

I don't work now, I have retired but if I was messing about like that I would have been out the door (after a couple of stern warnings).

They are paid and are there to work and if not there are plenty of people out there that will be willing to take their place.

Doesn't seem to be the way any more in many companies

we had a computer in one place at work (strategically positioned to reduce back and forth when working with certain network devices) that people were using to kill time pretending to be working on - instead of disciplining people the solution was to remove it (which significantly inconvenienced people actually doing work) and reconfiguring one of the systems that is viewable from where the managers are working to do the stuff it was setup for - which means people have to go out of their way or go all the way back to their desk.