I gave my WLL a static IP to avoid having to mess with DHCP. I'm not really a fan of making leases permanent.
Well I think that is flawed thinking. You need to deal with the DHCP service even when you set a static IP to be sure that you don't end up with an IP conflict resulting from a DHCP assignment to a different device.
While I can understand that creating DHCP reservations may have its challenges if you are not comfortable logging into your router and settings things up. But I think it is rather trivial to jump in and merely enter in a MAC address of a device with the IP address that you want reserved for that given device.
On the contrary the alternative choice of setting a static IP on a device may seem more straight forward but then you'd best be diligent enough and make sure that you are using an IP address that is outside of the DHCP address scope that the router's DHCP service is using or you might end up with an IP address conflict. So the very reason for setting a static for fear to not needing to deal with the DHCP service is flawed thinking because you'd need to deal with the DHCP service in order to properly configure a static IP on a device (to at least look at the current scope range). So since you'll need to be dealing with the DHCP service regardless.....might as well just enter in the reservation. Because you are either entering in a reservation or you should be limiting the DHCP address scope for DHCP leases. Then when done properly you'll need to keep a manual log of your static IP devices as the router is possibly not going to show you these devices. Some modern routers do detect static set device and they will be smart enough to exclude their IP from the DHCP service...but it isn't uncommon for this to not be necessarily baked into the router's capabilities.
Most home routers have a default DHCP range of the entire subnet handing out addresses from .2 to .254. That leaves no room for a static assignment.
There is another downfall into setting a device with a static IP. And that is that if you ever change out your router and the new router uses a different IP address subnet then you'll have orphaned devices with the old address scheme that you will not be able to reach. You'll then have to either factory reset these device and reconfigure them as they will not respond to DHCP or you'll have to manually put one of your computers on that subnet address space in order to reach these devices so as to not lose other configuration settings to then move that device over to the new address space....and that can be challenging for some people. Therefore I think it would have been much less hassle to have kept everything on DHCP....and with reservations where needed. Having DHCP reservations ensures that you do not end up with and IP address conflict, it ensures that you will not have orphan devices from a network that no longer exists, and you'll have a nice table to refer to with a list of all the devices on the network that is dynamically updated.
There are a few reasons to use a static IP...but that should usually be reserved for critical network infrastructure systems....not common in a home network....other than the router itself....that is always static.
