Some DHCP reservations are unstable or failing for specific IP addresses.
Some DHCP reservations are unstable or failing for specific IP addresses.
Router rule table probably recognizes the MAC address you provided, but then notices it doesn't belong in the range. This creates a conflict since the DHCP server defined by RFC rules should only assign addresses within its designated range. Likely the developers didn’t prioritize this, so the router simply halts further processing and waits for a proper response from the DHCP server. Your device falls back to its own hardware address because no valid DHCP reply reached it after the discovery stage. More advanced DHCP servers would alert you if you tried this. I’ve heard worse—like ISPs using modems that flood UDP when their unpublished DHCP buffers are full. It’s a bit amusing now, but not back then. I strongly disagree with the idea that static addresses are inherently bad. Issues like rogue DHCP servers, outages, firmware updates stripping DHCP support, and overall insecurity remain serious concerns. These problems can cause major disruptions, especially when a single faulty device breaks the chain. On the other hand, your production servers using static IPs keep running smoothly. Changing entire network segments is a layer 0 issue—like a monkey messing up the network setup. Probably not a layer 4 problem, in my opinion. That’s why I still prefer a mix of static and DHCP networks today. At least with IPv4.