Broadband Shield Youtube Blocking Issue

[Sharda540]

Hi all, Greetings. I have a strange issue and need some advice please on what might be going wrong.

I used Broadband Shield -> Custom settings to block www.youtube.com and I gave a time span for exclusion between 20:30 to 07:00. Soon after saving the settings, youtube becomes unaccessible over Wifi as expected.

But, alongside Youtube, some other apps stopped working. For e.g. Whatsapp on Mobile, Laptop all stopped working completely.

Doing one of the following 2 things mitigates the problem:

* Disable Broadband shield

* Switch from Wifi to 4G/5G

Why would blocking youtube affect whatsapp? Any advice or additional troubleshooting steps would be grately appreciated.

[Chrisee · Accepted solution]

@Sharda540 Broadband Shield is not designed to work the way you want and is quite a clumsy tool for a start while it will block You Tube on a browser it often wont block a You Tube app. Its down to how it works by intercepting DNS calls. Not a 100% certain whu its also blocking Whats App but the lower age ratings do limit Social Networking including What's App.

To get better control you will need to buy a proper parental control system and install it on the  devices you need to control. 

[Sharda540]

Thanks @Chrisee . Do you think if I buy some third party Router with better parental controls, then is it possible to replace the Sky Router with any such third party Routers? I have Ultra Fast Broadband.

[Chrisee]

@Sharda540 assuming you have full fibre you can use third party routers but not all can connect directly to the ONT some brands like TP-Link generally wont but Asus and Netgear generally do. You will lose the voice line if you take out the Sky hub. If you find a router you think would work either do a search in the forum for help in getting it connected or post again.

Some others  may work if connected behind the Sky hub in what is known as a Double NAT set up.