How can I block Youtube

D.K.

I have limited bandwidth and I'm finding that it's getting gobbled up by excessive use in my house, of Youtube.
I have free sygate firewall which doesn't appear to be able to block it and I was wondering if, short of removing computers from guilty parties, if there was any easy way of just filtering out the web site?

Thanks,
D.

Poolie

Do you have a wireless router or how is your infrastructure?

If you have a wireless router please provide make and model as you can set a firewall block in there.

Swipe

For a quick and simple solution, go to opendns.com and create an account. You can add their DNS servers to your router or PC and then choose what you want to allow or block. It's all explained in full on the site. You'll probably find your Internet speeds up too by using their DNS rather than your ISP's

Bambi234

One of the ways that I have done it when setting up friends computers who have kids is to use a free service called Open DNS.

Open DNS

You use these guys instead of the DNS server provided by your ISP. One of the many config options that they have is being able to block various sites such as pornography etc etc. This way you are able to block YouTube. I must admit it is not the simplest solution but the most effectivee.

Bambi234

Poo, Swipe beat me to it

D.K.

Many thanks folks,

Sorry about the late reply but I wasn't e mailed.
Poolie, I am wireless and wired.
Swipe, I'll give it a go.
Bambi, I'll try Swipes first then open DNS and if that doesn't work, Poo

Thanks again.

stateless

Open DNS is a good solution. You might be able to blcok it at your router too, if you're familiar with the various settings. Maybe there are problems to time limit useage of certain sites... that way you could engineer it so that youtube is not available at the time when you usually use the net, hence there would be no slowdown.

John_Gray

D.K. wrote: »

I have limited bandwidth and I'm finding that it's getting gobbled up by excessive use in my house, of Youtube.
I have free sygate firewall which doesn't appear to be able to block it and I was wondering if, short of removing computers from guilty parties, if there was any easy way of just filtering out the web site?

You can change the Hosts file on each PC/laptop to point www.youtube.com (and all variants) at 127.0.0.1 - but that doesn't sound too practical! Surprised that the hardware router cannot block it, obviously for all attached devices...

buglawton

Once you have blocked Youtube, the miscreant users, being bored, will find other similar (or worse) high bandwidth content!

I would investigate better bandwidth - maybe a '3' 3g wireless Router?

bingo_bango

Agree with you on them finding 'alternative' content to view, but considering they have a max 15Gb DL limit, I fail to see how a '3' router would solve the problem of ISP throttling and limits, unless I haven't been reading the right forums?

edit: Apologies buglawton. I have just re-read OP and see that it is a local bandwidth contention issue. All about finding a balance I suspect. Mind you, if OP is paying the bills, I'd just give the other users in the house fair warning, and then hide all the IEC leads for a few days if they don't comply. That will sharpen their appreciation of having any access at all!

davb

buglawton wrote: »

Once you have blocked Youtube, the miscreant users, being bored, will find other similar (or worse) high bandwidth content!

Yes, the OpenDNS route will work in the short term, so certaintly give it a go, but one of the favourite pastimes in schools/colleges is finding alternate IP only access to popular sites in order to get around blocks - depends how resourceful they are.
Then of course there is p2p downloading, BBC iplayer, 4od etc

With a decent router, or software like Netlimiter you may be able to apply bandwidth or time restrictions to certain computers, but it's not simple.