@rgomez,

This is definitely something that is on the radar of our development teams. Fortunately, the feedback has not been ignored. It was announced at CES that throughout the year, there are updates planned to our HomeShield service that will help mitigate some of these factors, such as the Private MAC addressing. We are just beginning to see these features appear, so keep an eye out for larger announcements and releases of HomeShield Features.

I do know that our teams have also been looking into other methods of keeping track of connected devices, since as you said faking MAC addresses has become the new normal.

We are also currently in a larger rollout of features for Decos through the 1.6/1.7 firmware update. Since the X55 uses HomeShield, the features between the two in terms of parental controls should be similar. However. if you have an older hardware version X60, it may be using the free HomeCare protection, rather than the HomeShield service that our teams are actively developing and improving on.

Theory Crafting: I would be inclined to believe that the whitelist feature may not have been added to the deco line because it would require each node to keep track of the devices that are not allowed to connect to the network. In 'normal' networks with an AP, the traffic would simply be forwarded to the router and rejected there; with a mesh network, the traffic may technically be a part of the network as soon as it connects.

  @rgomez,

I actually found a public press release that provides a very brief overview of some of the improvements: TP-Link Announces Homeshield 3.0

The features of your network are determined mainly by what router is set as the main node for the network. This is the case, especially when it comes to routing and parental controls, as the main node is still the brain of your network and manages the DHCP server and external connections of your network. The Deco Line was developed with your situation in mind, and provides the very upgrade path that you described, allowing access to the newest features and technology while still using your older nodes to extend your network.

In your case, the X55 would bring HomeShield and the 1.6.0 firmware features to your network, HomeShield would replace the HomeCare functionality from the X60. However, unless your X60s include the 1.6.0 firmware, some features of the firmware (not of HomeShield) will be unavailable to your network, such as node preference and node signal source preference, as they require all nodes on the network to be compatible with the feature and using a compatible firmware.