Today, I needed to configure a machine so it brought up its ethernet interfaces without an IP address.
This is useful if you use such an interface with plain ethernet packets. For example, network sniffing or bridging stuff, but also when you communicate with custom electronics that speak plain ethernet.
To configure Debian Wheezy to bring up these interfaces without assigning an IP address, add the following stanza to /etc/network/interfaces:
auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 0.0.0.0
You might also want to remove any IPv6 addresses from these interfaces. Stack Overflow told me to add the following line for each interface to /etc/network/interfaces:
net.ipv6.conf.<interface>.disable_ipv6 = 1