So this morning before doing the factory reset I decided to troubleshoot the problem a bit since it takes a good chunk of time to rebuild all the schedules. I wasn't sure how to save a config.bin file of my current set up and I wasn't completely convinced that saving then loading a .bin file wouldn't reintroduce the problem.
Without doing a factory reset I decided to try to disable each policy and test and see if that would allow my computers to access the internet. Remember the problem was that for whatever reason, if "enable access control" was switched on, it would kill all internet access whether LAN or wireless and whether it had been listed on a policy. Everything was shut down.
I have nine policies (Max 15 total available) and on the third policy I found that if I disabled it and saved the internet would be restored and work as expected. Realizing that it could be the schedule that was messing things up I deleted the schedule connected to the policy, saved, rebooted, ensured that it was really gone then re-wrote a similar schedule which I hooked up to the policy. (Note that all my policies are to block all access, which was working fine and kept the kids off the internet when they weren't supposed to be on)
For some reason with a new schedule enabling the problem policy would still kill all the internet access with the router so I deleted the policy (which tenaciously didn't want to be deleted and had to do it twice.)
Deleting the entire policy and the schedule has allowed me to at least save the 8 remaining policies and schedules and everything sort of works enough to keep my wife happy. I was even able to make a new test schedule (using random times and days, not similar to the one I deleted) and that new policy did not interfere with accessing the internet so it seems that I can make new access control plans without problems. Now I just need to figure out what it was in the other one I deleted that made it not work as expected.
I consider myself a Luddite with respect to technology and implemented access control so there would be no argument from the kids about when to get off the internet. It took me some time to understand all this, so here are my tips for setting up access control on your DIR 655:
[] Use the NTP Server. I found this out a few months ago when I first set things up because for whatever reason the internal clock of the 655 was built in a different part of the universe and cannot tell time or date in any manner whatsoever.
[] It seems counter intuitive, but when you enable access control, you actually need to set up your schedules first which is in the tools/schedules tab no where near the advanced/access control tab. I make the name of the schedule and the name of the policy similar but not identical so I can know which is which. So my schedule might be named "Tom7pm10pm" and the access control policy might be named "TomEveningLaptop"
[] Once you build a schedule you need to connect to a policy. The schedule tells when things happen, the policy tells the router who (which device) is affected by the schedule and what to do. (Log, Limit or Deny all access)
[] I use the MAC ID since it is like a serial number of device. IP addresses seem too easy to manipulate.
[] It seems you can make 15 policies and 35 schedules.
It would be great if D-Link would update their firmware to make it easier to manage access but for now at least I've gotten it to work. (I bought a D Link Cloud router with an app but never got that to work correctly which is why I've reverted to the dependable 655)
If I ever figure out what makes the router choke on certain policies I'll you all know, maybe it will help someone.
-john
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Topic: Access control mysteriously stopped working (Read 6687 times)