Setting up networking on a remote machine is a bit of a pain.  If you happen to make the smallest of slips your ssh session gets black-holed and you're up it.  You can try using a `shutdown +10 -r` command in another session to reboot-on-failure, but there's always the chance that you forget to set it up right when you need it, right before you bring up a mis-configured interface that messes up your routing tables (duh!).  You can even use the fancy curses UIs if you like, as long as you disable the interface onboot... but again, you have to remember the shutdown command.  Did I mention; "remember to run the bloody shutdown command so you don't have to wait a day for someone to come in and hit `reset`"... that's an important bit.