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New XT8 system. Suddenly unable to change device names. Any ideas?

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SDGTR

Occasional Visitor
New to Asus routers and having an issue hopefully someone can help with.

Three days ago I installed an XT8 system with the main router and two additional nodes (all v2). The day after I installed it I started going through the attached devices and renaming them so I could recognize them easily. I renamed a few without any issues.

The next day (yesterday) I went back to rename some more and found that suddenly for no reason the new names don't stick. For example, my TV is named something like "android-'something..." so I tried renaming it Sony-Downstairs but it will not keep the new name and just stays on the generic name. Tried again this morning and same problem.

I tried through the router's web interface under Network Map and also in the AiMesh menu, I tried through the Asus Router app and nothing worked.
The router and nodes are all configured with the current stock firmware. Hopefully there will be a Merlin FW for v2 in the near future.

So far I'm happy with the system's performance but in three days I've already run into two annoying issues. This is one of them. The other one was that the traffic monitoring was not working. The only way to fix that was to power-cycle the routers with the manual power switch (a regular reboot from the web interface did not work).

I haven't had a chance to do this again to see if it fixes the renaming issue but one of the nodes is on a high shelf and requires a ladder to get to. If I have to climb up there to power-cycle the system every other day I'm going back to the TP-Link Deco system I was using before.

I did notice the system's RAM usage was 72%. Is this normal for these?

Any ideas or suggestions?
 
So after messing around with things a little this morning I opened an SSH connection to the router and ran

nvram get custom_clientlist

Strangely enough, the device names I had tried to set actually showed up in there but they are not showing up when I look at the device list either through the router's web interface or the Asus Router app.

Is the custom clientlist kept in a file? If so, does anyone know where that file is located and what I can do to get the routers UI to pull the contents of this file?
 
Many problems of identifying (and naming) devices might come from the wifi MAC address randomization option in the privacy settings of the device.
Android devices apparently have this option enabled by default.
 
Many problems of identifying (and naming) devices might come from the wifi MAC address randomization option in the privacy settings of the device.
Android devices apparently have this option enabled by default.
Thanks. Unfortunately this is happening with every single device. Android TVs, Roku TVs, security cams, alarm systems, Windows desktops and laptops, iphones, ipads, etc.

It's not an issue with the devices but with the router not showing the new names. I also discovered that it happens when I try to change the device's icon.

Anyway, I finally got the ladder out and powered everything down. After restarting everything the device names I had tried to change were now showing up with the new names. It's as if the names did change but for some reason the system wasn't displaying the new device names. I was able to change several more device names and it worked normally. I really hope I don't have to power everything down a couple times a week.
 

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