It gives me no pleasure to report that the Vigor 2820n is indeed affected. It cannot terminate existing MSN Messenger sessions using scheduled firewall rules. Nor can it terminate other types of continuous data sessions such as streaming videos and playing certain games, either. I received this email from Ashar Zia at SEG Technical Support confirming the problem:
Unfortunately the firewalls on Vigor routers do have this disadvantage. The filters will only work for the packets of newly-established sessions. For the existing sessions that were initiated before the firewall is enabled (manually or by schedule), the firewalls treat them as legal ones and will not exam the packets.
However there is a work around by using an additional schedule at the same time which disconnects and reconnects the Internet session.Create another schedule which 'force down' PPPoE/PPPoA connection for 1 min & re-establish. This schedule will apply at 'PPPoE/PPPoA' for WAN1.
Well, I tried that, but it had unwanted side effects. For example, I tried it with 2 PCs, one running MSN Messenger, the other loading/playing a YouTube video. The progress of loading the Youtube video was interrupted for 1 minute while the PPPoA link was down, but then did not resume when the PPPoA link came back up. I had to restart the video, then manually move the position in stream to the place where it was.
I ordered the Vigor 2820n to fulfil my customer's request, which was, "help us put our child to bed", in other words, stop Internet games and chat on a laptop and on a Sony Playstation Portable at a certain time. They also stipulated that the family's other computers were not to be affected. Sadly the Vigor 2820n cannot deliver this requirement. I will have to try another product.
