Parents or network administrators can manage the software and set policies through a graphical interface in the Linksys Easy Link Advisor software. The service can also help to detect intruding devices and keep them off the network, as well as provide reports on violations of parental policies, Cisco and Trend Micro said.

There are about 200,000 known Web sites with malicious content, not counting phishing sites, which try to get users to disclose personal information such as passwords, said Maxim Weinstein, manager of the nonprofit organization StopBadware.org. Those figures come from research by Google and probably underestimate the true number, Weinstein said.

Consumers want to be protected from malware and are even willing to pay for it, as long as it's effective and doesn't annoy them, Weinstein said.

"They want the turnkey solution," Weinstein said.

Theoretically, Trend Micro and Cisco's approach is safer than PC software, because it's generally harder for a child to break into a router and change settings than to shut down Internet protection software on the PC, he said. It's also harder for malware to affect a router, he said. But it can happen, particularly when users don't bother to change the router's default password, which some malicious programs exploit.