Why Choose Kea?
ISC distributes TWO full-featured, open source, standards-based DHCP server
distributions: Kea DHCP and ISC DHCP. Kea includes all the most-requested
features, is far newer, and is designed for a more modern network
environment. ISC announced the End of Life for the older ISC DHCP system in
2022. Users of ISC DHCP may find these resources helpful in migrating their
DHCP server deployments to the Kea server.



How is the Kea DHCP server different 
from the older ISC DHCP?

Modular Component Design, Extensible with Hooks Modules. The Kea
distribution includes separate daemons for a DHCPv4 server, a DHCPv6 server,
and a dynamic DNS (DDNS) module. Many optional features are enabled with
dynamically-loaded “Hooks Modules,” which you need run only if you are
using them. You can write your own hooks modules (in C++) or try some of the
hooks we offer.

On-line Re-configuration with REST API. Kea uses a JSON configuration file
that can be modified remotely via set commands and reloaded without stopping
and restarting the server, an operation that could take quite a while with
ISC DHCP.

Designed to Integrate with Your Existing Systems. Kea allows you to
separate the data from the execution environment, enabling new deployment
options. Your network data - leases, host reservation definitions, and most
configuration data - can be located separately from the DHCP server itself,
using a Kea “backend.”

Web-based graphical dashboard . Kea now has a graphical dashboard for
monitoring multiple Kea servers. This system, called Stork, uses agents
deployed on the Kea servers to relay information to a centralized management
platform, providing the administrator with an easy-to-use quick view of
system status and activity.


Kea supports two database backends; MySQL and PostgreSQL. Choose to store
leases, host reservations, or shared configuration data in a separate
database backend. Benefits of this include:

Integrate it more easily with your other systems - provisioning systems,
IPAMS and so on - by storing critical data in a separate database.
Use the same hosts reservations backend for multiple DHCP servers.
Administer global options from a centralized configuration backend.
Manage large address pools in a database rather than a text file.


The core Kea daemons are open source, shared under MPL2.0 licensing. Kea is
developed in the open on ISC’s GitLab; we welcome you to open issues and
submit patches there. Kea runs on most Linux and Unix platforms, as well as
MacOS. If you don’t want to build from our source distribution, we also
provide a repository of pre-built packages for most popular operating
systems.

ISC also offers some premium Kea extensions that are not open source. These
are licensed under a commercial license. 
There are three tiers of commercially-licensed hooks; Premium, Subscriber, 
and Enterprise.

Hooks in the Premium package include: DDNS Tuning, Flexible Identifiers,
Forensic Logging, and Host Commands. The Premium hooks can be purchased,
without technical support, on this website.
ISC Support Subscribers receive all our Premium Kea hook libraries, PLUS
several additional libraries that will be most useful in larger deployments.
The hooks included in the Subscriber package are: Client Classification,
Configuration Backend, GSS-TSIG, Limits, Leasequery, Ping Check, RADIUS, and
Subnet Management.
The Enterprise features are reserved for customers with Silver or Gold
support from ISC. This top tier adds the Role-based Access Control feature.