so i tried with your suggested config ... everything comes up, but still no detection on wan when inserting cable.

The macs seem to be set properly, however when i run this command

cat $(get_mac_binary /dev/mtd8 0x6) 

its dumping the entire partition. I am guessing its failing to locate "get_mac_binary" and just cat'in the whole partition. regardless, I figured out how to grab the mac from nvmem.

hexdump -n 6 -s 0x06 -e '6/1 "%x" "\n"' /sys/bus/nvmem/devices/m
td8/nvmem

output

9483c4a4a721

I am going to rebuild with this change, tho I don't suspect it will change the outcome, I'll post logs afterwards. Is there anything else I should provide that will be useful in debugging ?