Router recommendations in UK - With website visited logging

[metallica123]

Hi,

For my own home network, can someone please recommend a broadband wireless router that allows for logging of websites visited by all devices that connect to it?

Most router models that I have looked at only provide information like bandwidth used, devices connected but no detailed URL logs.

- I am aware of OpenDNS but it does not work for what I am looking for. As I have dynamic IP and one device always need to be ON for the dynamic ip to be updated. This is not possible

- Pihole: not technically inclined

Hence, would prefer to buy a router that allows me to do this.

Thanks

 

[bill001g]

opendns is worthless as any form of real security. A couple years ago the most common suggestion from google on the search for opendns was the word bypass. It takes kids 2 seconds to get past this.

The problem with using a router is they have no place to store data. There are some third party firmware images that can do more and you can log to external servers from some.

Still this is all a complete waste of time to even attempt to accomplish. At very best you will get the main site name but you have no way to tell what url they are accessing. Tracking ip addresses does not help since many sites are virtualized and share with other servers....like this site. Edward Snowden pretty much caused all web traffic to become encrypted to prevent government spying. If the government can't get it you are not going to be able to either

Now if you only for example care about something like total traffic in certain period of time that you can get. It still has the issue of where does the router store the data.

 

[metallica123]

Thanks. I am looking for home network with atleast 3 devices

I am happy even if the router does not log full URL but just provides the top domain name. But most routers I see only provide stats on bandwidth and packets transferred.

For me problem with OpenDNS is that one device with the OpenDNS updater software needs to be ON all the time. This is not possible for me as I cannot install the updater on other devices on the nw.

I saw some articles on internet about routers logging the websites, but would be good to know the model names.

 

[bill001g]

I have not looked at opendns in years so I can't really comment on what restrictions it has.

It is not even logging that you need. The web traffic itself is only ip addresses and you can not reliably reverse them to a site.
They way it works is the machine will do a DNS query to get the ip address. After that it will for some period of time remember that mapping and use only the ip address. To get the site name you must intercept the DNS query.

So you can use firmware images like dd-wrt. Like most routers it proxies the DNS query the added ability is that it can log the dns with a option on the dnsmasq file. Not sure where it logs it to maybe a flash usb.

Now this only gets the person who wants to play by the rules. You would have to block any direct dns access with a firewall. And this does not stop the person who is willing to edit his host file so he does not even use DNS

 

[metallica123]

Thank you. Having done some research I understand I can use custom firmware, but I have read about routers which enable logging of websites visited.


I am after such router models. I am happy even if the logs are not perpetual or are only for a day old.

 

[bill001g]

Remember most people are so stupid they almost can't use a toaster. Router manufactures are dumming down routers and only include very basic feature. The new problem is to get high speed ie over about 250mbps the router must bypass the cpu and use a hardware nat accelerator. This means you trade off speed for features that can only be done on the cpu. So this reduces demand for fancy features even on high end routers.

If you do not want to load the custom firmware there are some that come preloaded with things like dd-wrt. I think netgear used to have some logging but you had to have a server running to receive the data. If you are going to run a server anyway you are better off just using pfsense to do all the work instead of a router.