thank you for the reply.

i need something i can use to turn on/off the websites or traffic of protocols of the games my kids use. i'm willing to try everything i can get my hands on and am not worried about any damage cuz anything i use it on, i can nuke. a timer of some sort would be nice too. to schedule when it turns on/off. options to which ip would even be better. i use tightvnc and the ssh/ssl vnc viewer on mint for monitoring them, but it would be nice to do other things without having to look so often. currently learning to use wireshark to find what i need to block.

thanks again for the reply. going to check out the software end of it.