SmartCAT and COM port enumeration, LAN IP addresses

My new Flex-6500 sits on my shack shelf and I am glad that I bought it, because I have
almost no problems with the TRX and SSDR. Having written that I must also say that
I have been very happy with my Flex-3000 for some years now and plan to keep it.
I am therefore quite used to VSPE by eterlogic and VAC, both of which run on my toughbook
now with PowerSDR.

Now I am quite new to the Flex-6500 and I know that software development is in progress
an I even am patient enough to wait for it ;-) I found out early that I have to start the notebook
first and than the 6500 and than SmartSDR, SmartCAT, DAX, DDUtil etc.pp. OK so far. 
Everything runs fine.

But I have - as I am sure a lot of HAMs out there also have - a LOT of CAT software running
on my notebooks as I have a TS2000X and a IC-756PRO, both with microHAM interfaces and
a lot of portables, D-Star and FM, which need programming. All these programs, mostly by RTSystems, need virtual COM ports, which have to be assigned and can't be easily changed.

Now SmartCAT comes around and wants it's own virtual COM ports and you can't do
anything about it's COM port enumeration, because SmartCAT is unable to see virtual
ports which are already assigned but not in use... 8-(

OK, I found out what to do, I reassigned some ports and everything runs now, as I said,
but it would be a lot easier if:

1. SmartSDR CAT would be able to assign specific COM port numbers to virtual ports,
    if VSPE by eterlogic can do it, why can't SmartCAT? 

2. DHCP is fine and works for me, but sometimes DAX thinks that my main network
    machine is the Flex and takes it's IP. Even closing and restarting CAT does not
    change that, CAT sits there and is obstinate ;-) So I would really like to assign
    specific IP addresses for the Flex and it's trabants CAT and CAX and Bridge and so on.

Both of these settings could be an option.

BTW it would be great to have an option in SmartSDR to assign Ctrl-T (example)  to tune for those of us who have a small shack and not enough space for two or more monitors ....

Thanks for the good work, happy new year and god bless.

Alex