Blue 2-1 Dimmer - Pairing Slowly / Not Pairing

Hello,
I have ~45 Blue 2-1 Dimmers in my house powering / controlling all of my lights.

When I first started installing them Back in June / July '24, they were pairing very quickly. It seemed like within several seconds of putting them into pairing mode they would pop right up in Home Assistant.
After several days and after quite a few switches were paired, the pairing started taking MUCH longer.
Now, as I try to pair new switches, they just won’t pair at all.
I will factory reset the switch, and it seems to work, but after I put it in pairing mode, it just won’t pair after multiple attempts.

I also tried updating the firmware, but that doesn’t seem to be working either.
Current Firmware on all my switches is:
0x0102020f
(Showing Latest is: 0x01020212)

I’m running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 3B with a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle.

45 switches running really well. Don’t understand what’s going on now…
Hopefully you all can help point me in the right direction.

Well, it looks like the Dongle has a max of 32 direct children. So, I suspect that all of my devices are trying to go straight to the dongle. (My house isn’t THAT big)

Any tips on forcing things to route through “child” routers and not allowing them to route directly through the Sonoff dongle?