Whitelisting would be great, especially since devices can use Locally Administered Addresses, i.e. for the device to be more secure it has a randomized MAC, but then the network is less secure because no filters can be applied, (I have an "unknown" bouncing around, and I'm trying to figure out what it is... :( )

  @Indian_King 

This request was raised much earlier, 4 years ago, in one of the posts I've seen today (nothing seems to have changed in the meantime).

 

Having a "blacklist" feature but no "whitelist" is simply ridiculous. I just got the Deco units yesterday, without even feeling the need to check if a Mesh system had the whitelist function as my decade-old tp-link router already had it.

 

Apart from problems with parental controls and general security as mentioned in earlier posts, is it not obvious why someone would use a Mesh system instead of adding a few more access points to a router? In the absence of a strange wish to spend money for nothing: to have home networks where a user's files can be accessed by various devices without any intervening problems. 

 

Now, why on earth would I put important files on a network that can on paper be accessed by any device, in the absence of the security the whitelist feature provides?

 

If, as one can readily suspect, this company has "brilliantly"(!)  adopted the strategy of canceling well-established and essential functions of router devices only to belatedly offer them in the form of paid-subscriptions, it should better realize that this is bound to fail: They are selling devices, no one would go for  "Home Shield" if you demand paid subscription for a feature that the device itself must have. 

 

 

I got the Deco system for the reason mentioned in the second paragraph and am going to return it now...

 

Simply ridiculous.

Whitelist is needed for Deco M4R otherwise parental controls are meaningless.

No parental control without this function. Childrens setup aleatory MAC on their phones and broke parental control.