On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:35:00 -0700 (PDT), Mathew Newton
wrote:

snip

Personally I prefer to manually configure any devices that deserve a fixed address with a static address outside the DHCP pool as I find it makes things far easier to manage and just seems altogether more robust and predictable.

Same here ... and I also try to group stuff together, like servers,
NAS's, RPi's printers and still leave a reasonable DHCP scope for all
the dynamic stuff.

An advantage of DHCP though is that you can use it as another support
aid to prove connectivity, no IP address, it's not seeing the router /
DHCP server for some reason.

And that's another 'issue' with my old Fritzbox. It doesn't seem to
release the DLCH pool leases properly and so I will something have to
go in and clean any currently unused addresses from the list to make
way (and have wasted quite a bit of time trying to diagnose why some
(often headless / new-to-me) device isn't doing what it should.

I think I looked into getting a later Fritzbox after you mentioned
yours last time as mine has been so reliable but not sure if I want to
retain the Fon feature for my 2 x VOIP lines. I think the idea was
they are better managed by the router as it can deal with the QoS
better there?

Cheers, T i m