Possible to limit someone's time on internet?

[spowel4]

I want to monitor how much time my kids spend on the internet (www) and limit their time per day. They would be running Windows while surfing because some of the online games they like to play only run on Windows (tried Wine/Crossover/etc... doesn't work). I'm assuming I need some sort of appliance in between the pc's and the router that would do the monitoring so I'm asking for ideas on how to accomplish this. My goal is to monitor each child's time on the internet per day and once they've reached their time limit for the day, cut them off from surfing until the next day.
So thanks in advance for any ideas!

[Pafnoutios]

While an separate box could easily measure the bandwidth being used, it doesn't seem to be able to easily know who is using that bandwidth.

[spowel4]

I thought possibly if each child has their own logon, then it might possible to monitor/limit each logon individually?

[fishface]

You might me able to do something with pfsense ( http://www.pfsense.org/ ), maybe with the squid plugins, it also have captive port, which might be useful for restricting/logging access.

You can by ready build appliances on ebay pretty cheap:

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_from=R4...All-Categories

The above appliance is pretty good, but I gave seen many going for around $80 which are very capable for home use...or just use some old hardware...but make sure you use Intel NICs

[happybunny]

I *think* my router can limit when certain IP's can access the internet...perhaps with research you can find one with timers?

[mrrangerman43]

I have a Linksys router and under "Access Restrictions" it allows me to limit access by day and hr. The only problem is, it uses IP and MAC to limit not user ID. You may want to look at this http://www.softwaretime.com/