I am requesting two content filtering features, in particular for Balance and SOHO series routers:
- Allow creating custom QoS user groups (something other than Manager, Staff, Guest).
- Allow exempting individual content filtering rules for specific user groups (as opposed to exempting a user group from all rules).
The default user groups - admin, staff, guest - do not fit real-world configurations, in particular for SOHO users. For example, a SOHO router may need rules for parental controls (Parent, Child) plus Remote Work and Guest. A small office may need to setup different rules for different departments, e.g., Marketing (with access to social media but still adult/spam filters), Admins (access to everything), Other Staff (no social media access, plus adult-spam filters), and Guests (only adult filters).
Custom User Groups would be very helpful in configuring other settings, not just QoS and content filtering. For instance, bandwidth could be capped for a group of multimedia-type devices, maximized for IP cameras/video doorbells, in addition to other settings for admin/staff/guest.
Content filtering is great and works really well. However, it cannot be customized very effectively with only 3 user groups. Right now, you only allow “exempting” the whole filter list from admin, staff, or guest. But, in the case of home use, for instance, there could be a need for 4 groups (parents, kids, multimedia devices, guests) in which different filters should apply (e.g. block youtube for kids only, block gambling for guests only, block hulu for both multimedia and kids but not parents).
I understand that Peplink’s focus is more on enterprise mobility networks, but your hardware is amazing and has really great potential for SOHO and advanced home use. Making content filtering and user groups more customizable would allow anyone to implement parental controls and other sought-after uses.
Thank you for considering this request.
Gabriel Mongefranco
Data Architect