On the Dell laptop Inco (4.10.24) we have two Ethernet cards when the Laptop is docked and one when not docked. The card in the Laptop itself is identified as eth0 when not docked but as eth2 when docked, in which case the docking station Ethernet card is identified as eth0.
The laptop's internal Ethernet card is only used when the laptop is not docked. Thus we can get away with configuring eth0 for both situations and eth2 as a removable card so that it is not automatically configured when the machine is booted!