How can I block Youtube

D.K.

Thanks for all your replies which I haven't had time to follow yet. My youngest is 10 and I doubt will bother to find something else she just watches the same bit over and over!
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My limit per month is 30G. 2 lappys and 2 PCs easily gobble 1Gig a day pushing over the limit...so it's not one offender, it's a small combination. Youtube is favourite by far.
I have an old router and there is no manufacturers name etc on it! so at the moment I'm trying to look for information. (It feeds another wireless access point).

Looks like I may just resort to some pulling of plugs!
Sorry if I don't respond but MSE has stopped e mailing me, but your advice is much appreciated

buglawton

Wow! We have trouble getting thru 2 GB per month including occasional iPlayer TV, lots of streaming audio, photos uploading etc - but then we are mainly adults in this household. Looks like your family might qualify for a documentary about net-addiction!

Sooler

You could use an application like Miro
http://www.getmiro.com/

With this you can download YouTube videos to your hard disk, so when the video is replayed it's only from the hard disk so no bandwidth used.

JasX

One way is to edit/append your hosts file to make your PC think youtube is somewhere other than where it actually is. (bonus of doing it in wondows is its effective for all browsers and doesn;t need any extra software installed)

googled these links that tell you how to do it

http://www.techimo.com/forum/networking-internet/195606-how-block-individual-site.html

http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/internet/applications/case-study/index.cfm?articleid=142

you might also want to install a freeware badnwidth monitoring app to count your total uploaded/downloaded bytes so far during the month, ones I'm aware of only count from an individual PC tho.

Long term 30GB is a horribly low monthly limit -get yourself onto a comparison site and sign up to a vaguely competative broadband deal that has no cap as constantly busting your current low limit might well prove expensive

D.K.

Thanks again folks,
If I can't get info on this router I'm just going to get strict, but I don't think it will be necessary.
JasX, I don't go over the limit because I've no intentions of paying any more. I've expensive but reliable ISP and I'm happy that way.
I put Netmeter on all the computers and the kids are all honest and don't even hide history.
They've cut down there usage by half since I explained!

Wonder what they are doing instead?

JasX

D.K. wrote: »

JasX, I don't go over the limit because I've no intentions of paying any more. I've expensive but reliable ISP and I'm happy that way.

Me too, £23 pm but only capped at three hundred GB per month with zero downtime in 3 years and counting

-oh...except the day my router blew up

BillScarab

If they're running Vista or Windows 7 on their PCs make sure they're not admins and then you can restrict it on a per PC basis via Parental Controls.

No use if they're using XP though.

4743hudsonj

or... or find a reallllly old version of mcafe, my rents had it and i was a non admin user on their pc and it blocked me from everything! im pretty sure it was 01 or 02 edition, it was crap, every site had a big pop up asking me to allow access or deny. im sure you could use it to annoy them into not using bandwidth.

Or use Virgin who have unlimited downloads, they just throttle the connection for a few hours, in my experience the throttling hasnt been noticeable for basic surfing, youtube take a bit longer to buffer maybe but thats it, so aways an option......

tanto

if you are using internet explorer you can go into internet options then under the content tab use content adviser to block websites that you do not want to be viewed