I see a lot of people in forums and other, looking for answers. Why when I setup the URL filters in my HUAWEI Home Gateway HG659, they do not work. In fact, they do not seem to work for many HUAWEI Routers.
I have tried them. Sometimes they work. Sometimes not. There seems to be no rhyme or reason.
Why would you want to do this ? So that when my kids are doing homework, they can’t get to Reddit.com or even Discord. Can I get this silly URL filter to work …. yes you can.
There are two things to understand. Firstly, how it works. Secondly the accepted syntax.
So, how does it work ? This is a DNS block. DNS being the database on the internet that your computer looks at to determine what place to send your browser or service to, after you have typed in the address you want.
All this router does, is send anything in your block list, to a black hole, when someone types in that listed address.
The problem is, you are likely typing in the site to block and then testing it on your target PC straight away.
The Pc has a thing called the DNS cache. This means, even though the Router is going to send the PC to a black hole when it tries to find a blocked site, if the PC already knows how to get to that site another way, other than the router, it will go to the site just fine. This is only a very basic way of filtering websites.
If you are not great with computers, a simple Pc reboot should make the block list work.
If you are great with Windows PC’s then drop to a command line, run an “Ipconfig /flushdns”
This means the DNS cache is now empty and the PC has to ask the router how to get to places and any bad trigger words, will go to the blackhole.
So what are the website entry syntaxes ?
Before you go to crazy, be aware you have a limited number of sites you can add. Think creatively about how to block sites with minimum entries. Also know that some websites you want to block, might have a different address to what you think. Here are some websites and various forms you can use
v19.tiktokcdn.com
v16.tiktokcdn.com
api.tiktokv.com
api-h2.tiktokv.com
api21-h2.tiktokv.com
mon.tiktokv.com
ib.tiktokv.com
p16-tiktokcdn-com.akamaized.net
v16-tiktokcdn-com.akamaized.net
www.youtube.com
www.m.youtube.com
ytimg.com
ytimg.l.google.com
s.ytimg.com
youtube.l.google.com
googlevideo.com
i.google.com
deviantart.com
*deviantart*
*.deviantart.com
www.reddit.com
*reddit*
*.reddit.com
reddit.com
*discordapp.com
discordapp.net
*.discord.com
*discord*
discord.com
