This How To Protect Children With Unifi helps you to enable a better protection for your children’s in your home WiFi network. It’s actually very simple to improve the protection. To enable better protection, we will in this HowTo be leveraging on both, OpenDNS and the UniFi USG Firewall.
Index Of How To Protect Children With UniFi
Background
I have two children’s that are in an age in which they love to access and explore the internet. It’s however very difficult to control what they surf all day long. As parents we think, that we have a certain responsibility to protect the kids against inappropriate content.
Certainly, there is no 100% protection and the kids might find one or the other way around the protection controls you put, but at least we do not make it that easy anymore with this how to.
OpenDNS is a free service that is part of Cisco Systems Inc. This service includes one option that is called OpenDNS Family Shield. It consists of two name servers that can be used for free. These name servers block adult content that could for children be potentially inappropriate content.
The name servers are (as of September 2023):
- 208.67.222.123
- 208.67.220.123
This how to will replace the existing DNS servers of your UniFi network configuration by the above OpenDNS Family Shield DNS servers.
The following equipment was used for this how to:
- Mac Mini
- Ubiquity UniFi Firewall USG-3P (Software Version USG 3P 4.4.57)
How To Protect Children With UniFi
The how to is actually quite simple. First of all we create a new network that which is foreseen for your children’s. Call it whatever you like. I used the same name as for my other network and added an “_kids” at the end.
Create a new network:
- Login to your UniFi Firewall USG – 3P
- Click on “Settings”
- Click “Networks”
- Next click “Create New Network” and give it a name e.g. SOMETHING_Kids
- Select Auto-Scale Network (or if you want to be more precise with IP addresses, you enter exactly what you like)
- Activate Advanced (move from Auto to Manual)
- The VLAN ID should be different to the VLAN that you use for your WiFi. Typically in the standard configuration it is. Better to doublecheck.
- Disable IPv6 (I disabled in order to reduce opportunities for children to circumvent your controls)
- Under “DHCP” you can find “DHCP Service Management”. Click “Show Options”.
- Within these options you find “DHCP DNS Server”. Click “Enable” and enter the two OpenDNS FamilyShield DNS Servers (208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123). Once the above is done, click on “Apply Changes” on the right bottom.
OpenDNS FamilyShield DNS Servers
Create a new WiFi:
- The next step is to create the WiFi network for the children’s. Click on “WiFi”
WiFi Network for Children
- Create a new WiFi Network that you like to call SOMETHING_Kids. In the “Network” section, you select the children network you created in step 4. Finally click on the bottom right corner “Add WiFi Network”.
Kids WiFi Network
- After A while the network should be available. Leverage on the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Laptop or whatever your children like to use. Turn off WiFi on it and after one minute you turn it on again. Once done, connect the device to the newly created Kids WiFi. In my case it’s named “LA_Kings_Kids”. Note: You maybe like to delete the old WiFi connection (and change the password of it). This will ensure that your kids cannot use again your not protected network.
- Double check the DNS setting after you have done step 7. On the iPad for example you go to Settings, WLAN, and than you select the whatever you called your kids WiFi by pressing on he blue (i).Within this, you should find “DNS configuration” that most likely is set to Auto. Selecting it, you most likely will find the two above OpenDNS FamilyShield DNS servers. If that’s the case, you have done well. The second option is, you surf to: http://welcome.opendns.com . If your configuration works, than you should get something like the below:
Welcome to OpenDNS
Additional Information
We talked a lot about DNS. However, what is DNS? DNS stands for Domain Name System. It allows you as a human to surf the internet more easily, since it translates domain names (that you most likely can easier remember) like MyHowTo.Blog into IP addresses (that are most likely more difficult to remember). Check out more details about DNS here.
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