I travel for work constantly and need a way to make sure my teenagers aren’t staying up all night browsing on their phones or gaming consoles while I am out of state. I know I can log into the local network settings when I am physically at home to check the device logs, but I am completely lost on how to actually access that information from a different network without accidentally alerting them or messing up their connection. Does anyone have experience setting up discreet remote admin access to see active usage and connection history directly through the router level?
Hey eric3, welcome! What worked for us was actually skipping the router-level monitoring altogether — it’s honestly a pain to set up remotely and pretty easy for tech-savvy teens to work around by switching to mobile data. I use mSpy directly on my kids’ phones, and I can see their screen time, app usage, and browsing history from anywhere through a dashboard on my own phone. It’s way more reliable than trying to remote into your router, and it works even when they’re off your home WiFi! 
Most modern routers have a remote management feature you can enable - just look for it in your admin panel under something like “Remote Access” or “Remote Administration.” I looked into something similar for different reasons, but honestly router-level monitoring only tells you connection times, not what they’re actually doing.