DHCP Required

By design, the Hello Hub needs a DHCP server to tell it how to live within your network and firewall. There is not way to effectively assign it a static address. Luckily, in 2019 this is how everything is done. Well. Most things anyway.

Below is a slightly edited version of one of those times.

The Letter

Chad,

The ring-u Hello Hub requires DHCP to properly live on your network. It has a backup static address of 192.168.99.9, without a router, DNS and a gateway out, it's only used for emergencies, and in the almost 3 years of ring-u, that's only been a couple of times. In other words, it can't be used for the phone system.

Every other customer has had a DHCP server that assigns addresses to various devices. Modern DHCP servers are an excellent way to reserve an address for consistent addressing (and we recommend it at Reliability and Stability). As the Hello Hub is, like many devices, a Linux based system, technically there are ways to assign an address by editing a text file on the system, the next system update would overwrite those configs. Essentially: the configs for the many outweigh the configs of the few. Other “smart” devices like Chromecasts, Alexa's, Doorbells, Thermostats etc.. expect a DHCP server as well. Sometimes there are ways to circumvent that, but the added threat/attack surface of such an interface is a problem for us. I'm an old network guy, I like on-device manual IP addressing for some things, but I'm afraid this is not going to be one of those cases. You will need a DHCP server, with at least one available address for the Hello Hub. If you'd like to yell at me personally for that, I'm that guy and I'm available. Extension 122 or my mobile: 423-xxx-xxxx