Netgear DG834G v4 - Blocking Sites (or not)

Hi

After a powercut/surge killed the DSL side of my Netgear DG834Gv2, we replaced it with a v4.

The original firmware (5.01.01 IIRC) had plenty of faults that the v2 didn't have - including firewalls rules not being disabled and blocked sites not working.

Anyway, I've updated to v5.01.09 (the latest version at the moment) and it's fixed some but not all of the bugs. I can disable rules without deleting them, but the blocked sites feature still doesn't work. You can add parts or all of a site's name to the blocked sites list, set it to block "always", hit "Apply", and then browse straight to the site that's supposed to be blocked!

I've made sure that the trusted IP is cleared and disabled, but it makes no difference.

Is there a work-around, or do I have to wait until the v4 software is updated again?

Cheers

Jason

Seems to work ok for me. I just put bbc.co into the blocked sites list and the router blocked it ok.

John.

Could you give an example of the "Type Keyword or Domain Name Here." you are entering? I have no problems with blocking bbc.co.uk.

p.s. apart from my router blocking this post until I stopped it blocking the keyword bbc.co.uk.

Hi

Also working here, maybe you are viewing a cached copy of the site, what happens if you try refreshing the page with Control + F5?

Regards

Phil

Hi

Thanks for your help so far. I've cleared the block list and just added:

bbc.co

It still lets me browse round the BBC site, even to pages I've never been to before, with "Keyword Blocking" set to "Always", and the "Allow trusted IP address" to false. I also made sure I clicked on the "Apply" button. The router has been powered down and up numerous times too.

I can use the firewall rules to block sites by IP address, but I just can't get this thing to work.

Cheers

Jason

Mystery.

Here's what I get

If you're running the latest firmware, I'd be inclined to do a hard reset (with the "button").

John.

Hi John

Thanks very much for that - I should have tried that first, it works!

I found out what seems to be the root cause, it was my firewall rules. When I did the hard reset, I checked to see whether sites were blocked correctly, and they were. Reloading my previous settings stopped the blocking again though.

I carried out another hard reset, and decided to set everything up manually so that I could catch the setting that messed everything up.

It turns out that the way I set up my firewall rules on the DG834G v2 doesn't work any more on the v4!

I used to have an outgoing rule to block "Any(All)" connections, and then build on top of that with allowed ports for email, news, browsing etc. This let me divide my network so that the kids' PC couldn't get infected with whatever rubbish they download and start sending rubbish everywhere. It also meant that I could set the router to cut off their access on the scheduler.

Now, however, the moment I add a rule to allow HTTP traffic, it bypasses the blocked sites checking in the router. This seems to mean that I can't build up my list of allowed protocols any more, if I want blocked sites, and will need to start blocking specific protocols instead. That seems less secure to me, and a backward step from the v2

Thanks once again for your help though.

Cheers

Jason

Yes, it does seem a bit odd. I'd never checked but had assumed that sites added to the blocked list had their incoming traffic blocked. Seems it's the outgoing traffic that gets blocked.

As you say, if simply allowing a protocol overrides the list, it's not very good.

John.

I wasn't doubting what you'd found but my inquisitive nature has just forced me to try it for myself - and you're right.

Even if all outbound protocols are Allowed by default anyway (which they are), adding an "Allow HTTP" overrides the blocked sites rules.

I reckon that has to be a bug. "Tightly defined" rules (ie a blocked site) should always override generic rules.

John.

I wouldn't call that a bug, I'd class it as a feature. I don't see how the software developers can double guess peoples' intentions. For instance you might want to block all traffic to a site but ftp.