Blocking access to DD-WRT’s web interface from guest network

Even though I’ve shifted all the routing functionality of my LAN to the excellent pfSense (and specifically to a PC Engines alix2d2, for the time being), DD-WRT still plays a role in my network, since it powers a couple of my access points.

One of its key features that I rely on is the ability to make two or more SSIDs available, bridging the wireless networks to different VLANs in order to separate them. I have a couple of them at the moment, but the main “secondary” network is the guest one.

On my guest network, I want to prevent any access to DD-WRT (such as the web interface, SSH management, and so on). AFAIK, there’s no graphical way to do so in the admin panel, so I resorted to a quick iptables rule.

iptables -I INPUT -i br1 -d <DD-WRT's IP on guest net here> -j DROP

Basically this tells the firewall to DROP every packet that comes in from the br1 interface (make sure it’s the correct one in your config) and that is destined to its IP address on that interface.

To save and apply this rule log into the web interface, go to Administration/Commands, paste the command above (make sure you’ve inserted the correct IP) and then click on the “Save Firewall” button. Done.

Note: with this rule DD-WRT will be unreachable from that VLAN/SSID, even to you, so you’ll always have to access it from the main VLAN/network.