Posting the solution in our case, not alot of info on this topic.
We loaded client storm water CAD data into the latest UN asset package. The load failed at the Device > Manhole Channel > Manhole Channel layer, specifically the 'activevol' field, we left that field null during the load as we don't have attribute data for it. That caused the load to fail.
So we inserted arbitrary value of "1", data load was successful. Long story short, it was this value that was keeping the subnetwork dirty and would not propogate the network past the first manhole channel upstream of the subnetwork controller. Once we flipped to 'activevol = 0' the subnetwork is clean and network updated properly.
ESRI, seems like a valid default should be enforced in the asset pacakage for this field.
This may not be other people's problem, but it could be.