Gargoyle Forum

I have a particularly troublesome user in my household who refuses to adhere to his quota. I have a blanket "Others (Individual)" daily quota, and he soon figured out that he can simply change his MAC address to be allocated a new quota - effectively giving himself unlimited quota. My response was to allocate static IPs to all known MAC addresses, in the 192.168.1.1-100 range, and create a whitelist exception for this IP range while blocking everything else. Is this the best solution?

He can still change his MAC address to that of other machines on the network without any problems, and it is also an inconvenience whenever new machines need to use the network. Is there any better solution?

yeah, kick him in the nuts, remove him from the static IP's and change the encryption password. He can use dial up....

I'd love to, and he deserves it for being an entitled ass, but he has just as much claim to the net as I do so unfortunately it's not an option.

I think the approach you have identified is reasonable. If he knows how he can figure out one of the other MAC addresses he can cheat as you say but then he will have another household member to deal with since he used up his quota as well as his own.

You could make a two router solution. Router one would have a Wifi password shared with users who play by the rules. This password would also need to be periodically changed to prevent propagation. The second router for all other users and guests. All users of the second router subject to a single quota monitored by the first router.

The next level in the arms race would be to use a hotspot solution (not supported by Gargoyle). These require users to login each time they use the system which the rest of the household may not like.