Is there a way to force Hubitat to go back to the old IP address and stay there? It was supposed to stay on 10.0.0.21 but for some reason has gone to 10.0.0.17
As long as the hub is set to use DHCP, what IP address it's assigned is determined by your DHCP server/router. I would double-check the reservation and, if it looks right, delete/recreate it; then reboot the hub.
The entries on the networking page do not matter unless you switch to static (clicking the button that says "Save and switch to static IP", but folks seem to have a mixed bag of results going that route.
Well, it's now set to static IP and I entered IP address 10.0.0.21 and restarted.
Yet it's still on 10.0.17 and I can't figure out why. Am I missing something here?
You might try poking a paperclip in the square hole for I believe 20 seconds. That sill reset only the networking to default DHCP. Leave it that way, and it should always get the correct IP address from the server.
Forgot to mention, the square hole is on the bottom of the hub.
If you are accidentally blocked from accessing your hub due to an incorrect or unknown IP address setting, turn the hub over and use the point of a pen to press a small button just beneath the surface of the hub casing for at least 7 seconds. All of the holes on the bottom of the hub are square in shape, but one hole is round. With the hub upside-down and the Ethernet port at the top, the round hole will be in the top row, sixth from the right.
See if there is anything else currently using the IP you thought you reserved on your router. But some routers are just not very good at the whole concept. My old ISP-provided router "Hub One" was hopeless and gave out what it felt like. Our new TPLink Archer handles it better. Due to experience of my previous router, I had preferred to set static IPs on devices. But lately I have found that to interfere with cloud-mediated features on some devices such as my Reolink cameras, and even the ability to find my 2nd Hubitat using the Find Hubs option. So now I am gradually shifting to reserved DHCP.
This is a great point.
I would trust a router provided by the cable company about as far as I could throw it.
I would definitely set the Hubitat to use DHCP (not static). This is typically done to make sure the Hubitat has a static ip address on your local network (sounds counterintuitive, but it is true). Since your router is the device that sets IP addressess, it is best to let the router be in charge of keeping the address of the Hubitat static. This is done by going into your router's settings and reserving an IP address for the Hubitat, while simultaneously going into the Hubitat settings and setting its network settings to DHCP.
As long as the router is able to reserve IP addresses for devices (been a feature of most routers for decades), everything works as it should. Routers supplied by ISPs are notoriously not very good. Usually its a modem/router/access point all built into one device. My ISP modem/router/access point went wonky earlier this year, I could not figure out how it was assigning IP addresses, what I told it to do and what it did, where two different things. Went down the rabbit hole of setting hubitat to static ip (in the Hubitat settings) and with a router that would not cooperate everything went wonky (not HE fault, its the router that sets IP addresses). Threw the piece of junk out and did a serious upgrade to my home network (seperate modem, router, switches, and access points) all through an easy to manage interface. Never been happier, and now all the networking settings and control in my home is on devices I own and exclusively control.
OK, thanks for the help. Quick update: The router eventually went back to 10.0.0.21 which is what I had wanted since all of my legacy dashboard links are with that address. I ended up not having to hard reset the Hubitat.
Issue is, I had selected static IP in Hubitat several updates ago when that option became available, and also reserved that IP in my xfinity router (I did not some advice about ISP routers and perhaps leaving it in DHCP). And for a while, this was working great - my Hubitat used to get a switch IP addresses every 2 weeks and it stopped. But then it happened again which is what prompted this thread and strangely did it didn’t go back right away to the old IP address despite my forcing it to.
So what else can I do to prevent this from happening again?
Just to clarify, is “reserved DHCP” different from selecting a static IP? I use an Xfinity router and it does give me the option to either leave on DHCP or reserve a static IP.
I guess I could try this. I think I made both the Hubitat and ISP router reserve a static IP at the same time so I guess I could try leaving the Hubitat in DHCP mode while making sure the router is assigning the IP. Don’t know why that would make a difference, but if that’s the only solution left to prevent this mess, I’ll give it a shot.
Yes...a DHCP reservation is different from static.
DHCP works in scopes. For example, you can assign a scope that says "hand out any IP address between 10.0.0.2-10.0.0.254" and it will give out any IP address in that range (more or less at random but there's more to it than that).
DHCP reservations are set using MAC addresses and basically pair an IP to a specific MAC address. So, you say MAC "A" gets IP "A" and so on. The IP address is still given by the DHCP server, but it will, ideally, always give the same IP for that particular device.
Static IP addresses do not have DHCP involved. This is the process of manually configuring, at a minimum, the IP address and subnet mask directly on the device. Since the DHCP server (typically the router for most home setups) isn't involved in this process, it won't automatically know the IP address selected is in-use.
Static IP reservations in your DHCP server are to account for the bullet above. This is how you can use DHCP for some devices and static setup on other devices without having to worry about the same IP address being given to two different devices. This configuration tells the DHCP server to not assign the IPs added into the static reservation list. More often than not, with modern networks, static assignments aren't needed (and are generally not recommended) for user devices.
A real world example (glazing over a lot of the technical details):
You have two PCs. One is a laptop where you don't care about the IP address. The other is a server that needs to always have the same IP address. Then you have a really old network printer that can't do DHCP.
The general recommendation for Hubitat is to do a DHCP reservation for the hub in your router's configuration and leave the hub set to DHCP.
If those are the two choices in your router’s settings then I’m guessing they chose their words poorly.
As @anon47916022 mentioned, static IP addresses and DHCP reserved IP addresses are two different things.
Your router probably should be giving you a choice to use DHCP to assign an IP address to a device, which might change if the device drops off your network for a period of time and then reconnects; or reserve a DHCP address, so that the IP address the router hands out to the device with DHCP never changes no matter how many times it disconnects and reconnects.
Adding the word “static” in with respect to DHCP, while technically accurate (in the sense that a reserved DHCP address doesn’t change), just makes things more confusing.
This is what it looks like in my router. My choices are either DHCP or "Reserved IP." So... is "Reserved IP" the "DHCP reservation" mentioned previously? I think so based on what you and FC mentioned. What do you think?
Looks that way.
Add my old amped Titan to the list.
Work great for months, then out of no where, just crap the bed... 
Ubiquiti ER-X, not a hiccup coming on 4 (maybe 5?) years.
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