Comparison of DHCP server software explained

The following comparison of DHCP and DHCPv6 server compares general and technical information for several DHCP server software programs.

General

Name	Author	First public release	latest stable version	Cost	Software license	Written in
dhcpy6d^[1]	Henri Wahl	2012	1.6.0			Python
dnsmasq	Simon Kelley	2001				C
ISC DHCP	Internet Systems Consortium	1999	This software has reached EOL!^[2]			C
FreeRADIUS^[3]	FreeRADIUS Development Team	2012 (First stable release including DHCPv4 support)				C
Kea DHCP^[4]		2014	Kea 2.4.1 ^[5]			C++
udhcpd	Matthew Ramsay	1999				C

Operating system requirement

In this overview of operating system support for the discussed DHCP server, the following terms indicate the level of support:

• No indicates that it does not exist or was never released.
• Yes indicates that it has been officially released in a fully functional, stable version.

This compilation is not exhaustive, but rather reflects the most common platforms today.

Feature matrix

Server	BOOTP	DHCP	DHCPv6	Other	Load balancing	Failover
dhcpy6d				PXE, Dynamic DNS
dnsmasq				PXE, TFTP
ISC DHCP				Dynamic DNS^[6] ^[7]
Kea				Dynamic DNS^[8]
FreeRADIUS				RADIUS, VMPS
udhcpd

See also

• Comparison of DNS server software

References

Kea DHCP

Notes and References

1. Web site: About: dhcpy6d . dhcpy6d.de . 2021-04-21.
2. Web site: ISC DHCP Server has reached EOL . Internet Systems Consortium . 4 October 2022 . 14 October 2022.
3. Web site: DHCP . www.freeradius.org . 16 August 2015 . freeradius.
4. Web site: Kea . isc.org . 2014-08-29 . 2014-08-31.
5. Web site: Kea 2.4.1, Nov 2023, Release Notes . Internet Systems Consortium . 18 January 2022.
6. Web site: ISC DHCP 4.4 Manual Pages - dhcpd.conf . 2023-02-19 . kb.isc.org . en.
7. Web site: ISC DHCP support for Standard DDNS . 2023-02-19 . kb.isc.org . en.
8. Web site: 13. The DHCP-DDNS Server — Kea 2.3.4 documentation . 2023-02-19 . kea.readthedocs.io.