Here's an experienced, but semi-conservative POV (Score 1)

I actually am not a father, but have run BBSs where kids surf way back and participated in forums with kids present, as a tech who does it professionally, so here are some tips: If you have to actually control where the kids go, the better routers have IP blocking. To a degree you can then block domains like those that hold goatsex and the worst of the junk from even displaying-- the kids cannot get there as the home router is blocking them. However, if your kids more and more go elsewhere to surf (which you will know by them being gone and not surfing from home), you then know the rules are more strict than they will accept, especially if the friend's houses they go to are houses where the kids or parents have computers with internet access. If you must enforce heavy handed rules, there are several routes to use: 1. Parental content control software that filters out the obvious porn, which will get about 75% of the utter trash as far as seeing it. Many public libraries also log where folks go, and use IP control rules to disallow the obvious junk sites, and also content block. 2. Least likely to be disturbed is hardware based control or a funneling box(computer that acts as content prefilterer and surfing logger and blocker) that has a hardened O\S (say BSD or Astaro Linux) AND has email filtering and acts like a home email server while killing viruses. THAT machine needs to be off-limits to the kids AND local password login protected. Then the parents get to program it so things best not discovered by an 11 year old by accident but allowable for a 15 year old can be blocked by the machine IP of the party trying to surf. This box could be a 1 GHz CPU with two network cards, one to cable modem and one to a switch that the other boxes are hooked to, IF it mostly does traffic and email processing and some limited IP filtering. But basicly, kids will get tired of the same old junk after a while, it will take varying amounts of time and each kid's\youth's saturation point will vary. But the younger ones need more protection than the 15 and up crowd which WILL get exposed to what is out there elsewhere if you control too heavily and filter email too aggressively. Ror the younger crowd, I am 50 almost and am an older guy, take what I say with an ounce or two of salt if you want, but for parents that is why things are in hardware for that kind of control to get the most customized and personbalized to family values results. Precanned such boxes are not cheap, though Symantec does sell a box series that does most of this (not software, hardware that is a 1U rack mountable or which can be put on a shelf in a decently ventilated and cooled area). They are of the class Security Appliances. Some parts of this can be done by better firewall routers. John.