My friend want to control his kid's access of internet . For example, just set up 6:00pm - 8:00pm, the internet access from his kid's computer will be through, the other time it will be closed.

And his kid's pc is windows. Free/open source software always comes first.

Any ideas ?

how is the intranet configured? is the father pc the gateway/firewall of all the intranet? if not, the only solution is to cut it from inside windoze itself... I don't remember so much this OS :P, but I think there were some option(s) to do so.

Use a linux hosted netfilter/iptables firewall. Use cron on the firewall host to run a script that enables & disables access by the kid's computer on the desired schedule. Been there done that.
--- rod.

As stated depends on your hardware. Many of the newer versions of home routers like Linksys have a built in timer function to disable access I believe based on the MAC.
Assuming a router is being used have your friend check his manual for such a function.

Do you mean this , using Linux as firewall, connecting windows PC to Linux sever which actually is router ?

But how to setup in Windows PC ?

any link is welcome.

Thanks.

we have Linksys router box, to which windows PC connects. Firewall is in the linksys box. But we don't find time schedule function in that linksys router.

Thanks.

If your windows boxes are connected directly to the internetrouter you have to install windows tools to restrict the internet access.

A much more elegant and LInux like solution would be to setup a Linux box as a router connected to the internet router and all the windows clients are connected to the Linux box (Your Linux box needs twi NICs). Then you could use either cron jobs to control internet access or if it's only web browsing you want to restrict install squid (proxy) on the Linux box and have all clients to use the proxy. Squid allows to define time slots on a client base.

one NIC connects to internet router, then how could multiple windows clients connect to another NIC ? need a switch ?

Thanks.

Yes. Unfortunately.

Got it. appreciate your reply.

Yes, the Linux firewall host is a router that sits between the local LAN and the internet. It has two (or more) NICs: one connected to the internet side, and the othe(s) to the LAN side. It manages all traffic to and from the LAN. The hardware required to do this is minimal. I use a 233MHz K6 for the purpose. People are throwing these away all the time. There are a number of free packages available to configure the firewall that will work with almost any distribution; at least one I've used even boots from a floppy. It can run headless, if you want. You would have to use a switch or hub to connect multiple hosts on the LAN side, unless you populate the firewall/router with lots of NICs.

There is absolutely no configuration of the Windows (or any other OS) hosts required on the LAN side. The kid doesn't have any access to the firewall (assuming he doesn't get root password), so he can't circumvent the 'security'.

--- rod.

Actually, unless you also run a DHCP server on the router (I recommend this), you may have to assign a fixed private IP to the LAN hosts. This would be a one-time-only change.
--- rod.