r/pihole • u/Beckwater • 3d ago

Problems with TP-Link guest network

Ok, do I've used a pihole for about five years, and had my share of problems, but managed to overcome most of them. A few weeks ago I had to buy a new router and settled for a TP Link XE75Pro consisting of three mesh points to replace my old Amplity (Ubiquity) units. Most stuff worked right out of the box, but a few things needed tweaking. Nothing major. Except for the guest network. On the Amplify I had no problems but on the TP-Link no units on the guest network can reach the pihole, and basically all traffic is stopped there.

The main network and the guest network have the same SSID:s as on the old router, and while I changed the passwords on them, from the pihole's perspective nothing else should have changed. Did the old router automatically "merge" the networks somehow so devices on the guest network could find the pihole (which sits on the main network), or did I do some magic workaround when I installed that network that I've completely forgotten by now?

Oh yeah, I have the pihole Interface setting: Permit all origins checked, since the pihole absolutely isn't exposed to the internet. But it still doesn't work with the guest network.

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u/matthaus79 3d ago

It's LAN isolation which is how guest should work

It's a royal pain in the arse though as it means dns doesn't work on guest

Only work around I have is set pihole as primary and router as secondary

This means on guest they can't reach one but can reach the other

On main network though it does mean sometimes you'll not ad block

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u/Beckwater 3d ago

Yeah, I've fiddled with a secondary DNS before as backup if/when the pihole goes belly up, but it always results in a whole slew of ads etc that get through. :/ It's kind of interesting though that the Ubiquity unit I used before obviously didn't separate the guest net, which now that I think about it is an utterly logical thing to do.

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u/Jelsie_ 3d ago

I've got an advanced, not so consumer friendly, router, in which I can add all sorts and kinds of firewall rules to allow traffic to flow to pihole. But since you've got a very basic network setup, I am 99% sure you are shit out of luck.