I have to disagree about static IPs. First of all clearly a lot of people, such as myself, want this. The reasons are pretty obvious. Since I run the ISC DHCP server I can go and edit the configuration on that server to include the MAC address and get this done, so it’s not like I don’t know how. If I was running a commercial box, e.g. a Netgear router, and I had to replace it, there would be a nightmare of reconfiguration, completely unnecessary, if all my boxes refused static configurations. It’s also more of a nuisance this way, and means a bunch of devices will fail unnecessarily if my DHCP server fails. There are important devices that I want to be absolutely reliable when everything else on my network starts falling apart, and this is certainly one of them. Since I have 3 separate network connections, the argument that I anticipate which is that nothing will work if my router fails, is a false one. It’s also not true that static IPs are more dangerous. One can incorrectly assign an address either way, and most modern DHCP servers do a ping check before finalizing an assignment, so doing an incorrect static IP assignment is no better or worse that putting the wrong IP in a MAC reservation entry. I also heartily disagree that static IP is becoming less common. I find its absence to be rare in the devices I encounter, which are many.