Shane Longtin, pardon my confusion, I misread that you -had not- yet upgraded to 380.68_4, apologies.
Our ISP is also rock solid, 99.99% or better most years; except when they have issues. Most of them won't tell you until their issues have passed, if then. Too many peoples' first impulse is to blame the router, but I understand your reluctance. To be safe, take a screengrab of all of the important tabs/pages in the GUI, to give yourself a slideshow to refer to, which avoids notetaking, writing down passwords, SSIDs, etc.
I sat on 380.68 stable until I read about the threats announced twos before, checked the status of Merlin; he had just released 380.68_4 about 30 minutes prior. I almost always restore my settings from the prior versiont then recheck them, so never worry about having to labor over keying in all the data manually. This has been a beautiful and stable build, and with over 150 different restore/reset and overwrites of configs and settings later, I'm only fighting the date/time bug; nothing else.
I understand that you're hesitant about assigning static IPs -to- your devices, but you don't have to- leave them as they are; the router takes care of that for you. The router sees the address each device broadcasts on (yes, even vaunted Apple devices). All you need do, is click on the pull-down menu in LAN DHCP, thereafter, whatever the router sees, it will automatically populate/use, every time you power up your router and devices. There's nothing to hardcode inside the device, unless you really like doing that manaually. I routinely avoid such pain. If you don't want to run a open WiFi system, where anyone/everyone can sign into your wife at will (not good security) then you don't have to. That is an eternal debate that's raged for many years and ever shall be thus; it's all up to your personal preference, more in line with your local WiFi environment. My iPad takes less than two seconds from the time I turn the radio on until it's sign into the router automatically, over our closed network, and never misses a tick. The router always remembers. No neighbors will be runnining around outside trying to determine where an unlisted 2.-5 ghz band eminates from, unless you're in an apartment building, wiht the radios' power cranked up and are using multiple APs The power doesn't need to turned up that high, unless you're trying to see how far you -can- broadcast. If you prefer to run openly and your name/SSIDs are known to the world, you'll be listed on all wi-fi maps, worldwide as a possible AP, which guarantees attention. Whatever makes you happy and comfortable. A semi-skilled 10 year old, with older brother handling the war-driving, can sniff anyone out in short order. It's only my opinion, that there's no point in aiding/abetting their mischief.
The 'set-your-device-ip' procedure is dead-simple and automated, and I figured you already knew the process. With you devices broadcasting and SSIDs, bands and power levels as you wish, just use the pull-down menu in LAN DHCP; you'll see the device, its' address, and give it a happy, user-friendly name, then click to add it, go back to the pull down menu and repeast until all your devices are listed; click at the bottom of the page on Apply to save; you're finished; Done.
I can think of two reasons why your devices may be dropping or lose their IPs, if there's nothing physically wrong with the router; if the SSIDs aren't set the same, the devices can wander and drop signal/IPs if the local area is saturated with many devices, covered in many other threads. Depending on the model/age of your router, how many radios are trying to latch on to your router at once, how many neighbors are confusing your signal (saturation), overlapping bands, etc. Unfortunately, it's not unheard of for WiFi radios to fail in any particular make/model; electronic gear isn't immune from dying, just like a microwave oven does. Much heavier and often as expensive as a good router. I've never had a radio in an router go bad, Two or three decent years from a router these days is a good run, although many run them much longer; the radios do get weaker over time. If the dropping wasn't going on before you upgraded, direct some attention to the SSID and professional settings, covered in various threads.
I hope this was more directed, and helps; good luck.
