ASUS ZenWifi Parental Controls unreliable - leaves devices without Internet access

[milhouse]

This is the second time I've ended up with devices that can't connect to the Internet after using the Family controls in the ZenWifi Router. I have set up some devices as belonging to a childrens group and applied content and time schedules to them. Then after a while (a few weeks) I find that some of those devices can connect to the wifi but have no internet access despite there not being any current time restrictions.
To be certain it's not some remnant setting, I temporarily disable all time restrictions and they still can't connect. They are also not blocked in the devices list, yet the effect is as if they are.

Last time this happened I was told by ASUS support to factory reset the mesh system and start again, but there must be a way of recovering the situation without resetting everything? Is it just unreliable?

It's really frustrating - I have better things to do than to factory reset and re-install the router every couple of months.

[milhouse]

Hi @Aureliannn_ASUS , thanks for the reply.

I have three access points - the one that is connected to the WAN is v1.0 and is on 3.0.0.4.388_24621. One of the mesh nodes is also HW version 1.0 though the firmware version on that is 3.0.0.4.388_24609, the third one is HW Version 2.0 and is on firmware 3.0.0.4.388_24609. I'm not sure why they aren't all on the latest firmware, nor how to upgrade the firmware on an individual node? Weirdly, when I click the Check button next to "Check Update" on the "Administration - Firmware Upgrade" page, it says each node is on the latest firmware, even though the two HW v1.0 nodes are on different firmware versions. Is that to be expected? One of the v1.0 nodes is in the role of the AIMesh Router if that makes a difference?
I've switched the auto-upgrade feature now so that each device will hopefully be on the latest firmware for its hardware version.
I normally use the Asus app on my Android phone to configure the router. To answer your questions, I looked at the web admin console from my laptop:

> Have you set up website and app filters as well as time schedules? Yes, there are Adult filters on some devices. On the phone app I can group devices together as one family member and apply one set of controls for all of them. I can't see the group definitions in the web console, but I see that the individual devices all have the adult filter applied. None of the other filter categories is blocked.

> Are all devices unable to connect to the internet after your configuration?
No, it's specifically the kids' devices that I grouped and applied the parental filters (Adult filter and time block) to. The controls work fine for a few weeks, blocking internet access on a schedule, but then after a while the devices end up permanently blocked. Other devices which didn't have controls applied continue to work normally.

> Have you enabled "Block All Devices"?
No, there isn't an all devices block enabled, and other devices connected to the wifi work fine. To work around the problem, I need to connect the kids devices which seem to be permanently blocked to the Guest Wifi but then I've lost the ability to control their internet use.