Playing on Mac or other alternatives

I'm sorry to hear that you have trouble with your sneaky kid getting around the Circle parental controls.

I don't know about your network setup, but you could try a combination of using MAC black-/whitelisting, which will take a bit of work.

What you need to do is: Create a list of MAC addresses used in your home (e.g. the Xbox One, the PC, the smartphones etc). You can find the MAC of the Xbox in the network settings, and the PC should show it's "physical" address (i.e. the MAC address) when
running the "ipconfig /all" command on a Windows command prompt.

As for your smartphones and tablets, you need to check the network settings of those devices for the MAC address.

Some routers allow you to only allow devices to connect to the internet, if they are on a known whitelist, all other devices are blocked.

So if you add the MAC address from the Xbox to the whitelist, it will work with the Circle service, and as soon as your son changes the MAC address to bypass Circle, the router blocks the device completely.

But not all routers have that MAC blocking function. So please check your router's manual, if your router has such a blocking setting.

That way you can force your kid to leave the MAC addresses as they are, otherwise they wouldn't be able to connect at all.

Of course, your kids MUST NOT have access to the router settings as well.

Hello Cheryl,

We understand that your issue here consists of the alternate MAC address consistently changing, removing its assignment from the Disney Circle.

We recommend that you create a static IP for the console,
and port forwarding on the network
configuration settings for a better connection.

Check out this article for more information on the Xbox Live Ports.

Hope this helps. Let us know.

I haven't had good success with the Xbox parental controls. I have the screen time set up such that he should not be able to use the Xbox at all after 10 pm on weeknights. Sometimes that works and he gets signed out but other times it seems that he can
log on and watch Netflix. Also, they take a bit of time to refresh, so if he has friends over and I want to extend his time that doesn't happen instantaneously. And finally, the thing I like about the Circle is that it attempts to integrate his use across
multiple platforms so I can just have one overall time limit and I don't have to micromanage his time on several different devices.

Cheryl

Hello Cheryl,

We understand that your issue here consists of the alternate MAC address consistently changing, removing its assignment from the Disney Circle.

We recommend that you create a static IP for the console,
and port forwarding on the network
configuration settings for a better connection.

Check out this article for more information on the Xbox Live Ports.

Hope this helps. Let us know.

Thanks! I'll give that a try.

Cheryl

A MAC address is a unique identifier associated with the device. You might be confusing it with IP. Your internet provider may create new IP addresses and you would need to reach out to them to get a static one or by following the instructions here - https://portforward.com/networking/static-ip-xbox-one/.

Hi,

Normally, connection to a particular WLAN/SSID will not require an alternate MAC address. So my question for you is; what kind of wireless "line" are you trying to connect your console with? Is this a hotel WiFi, or a campus WiFi, where you are presented with
a splash page. A splash page is web page where you, normally, authenticate yourself, to be able to access the Internet.