I ran my own home router and I used Kea and Power DNS using Systemd Containers to provide service for my whole home.
I was really impressed. I think the folks who put it together did a good job of addressing the major warts of my experience with isc-dhcp-server.
I'm sure it's a tremendous challenge writing software that's supposed to live up to modern expectations while still attempting to deliver on all of the legacy dependents and their unique use cases.
Makes me think of that article on how Cloudflare wrote their own Golang DNS Server and like some 900 whopping people use LOC records but they still support it
There's places where integration makes sense (home network/small business with tens of clients/devices) and places where dedicated engines make sense (ISPs, large enterprise VPNs, the Internet).
dnsmasq is awesome if you want a one-stop shop for DHCP and DNS for sure.
Yeah. Nowadays I use pi-hole which is dnsmasq underneath and use it with unbound.
Works great. Minimal fuss, efficient setup, little maintenance, I don't have to understand the guts. Everything on my local network is addressable.
Ad blocking at the router is also something you don't want live without once you've gone there but pi-hole is a great solution even if you don't want that.
I use Pihole as well (even tried to synchronize two for HA but I gave up). It is fantastic.
What worries me with dnsmasq is that it is a personal project maintained on a personal git (by a great person!). Sure, one can fork and whatnot but without several people participating it can fade out pretty quickly.
dnsmasq is great. The best part is that you can assign the same IP to multiple interfaces on the same device (to multiple MAC addresses) which drives network purists crazy and is no longer supported by systemd-networkd (because they are puritans). Separated DHCP/DNS can not do this. I will look into kea and whether they can do this.
I used to (when I did that more) set up a bond of my wireless and ethernet devices, so when ethernet was plugged in it was preferred, otherwise it would use wireless. It was pretty seamless, and provided the same MAC on both networks.
OPNSense deprecated (is deprecating?) the included ISC DHCP server and now has the Kea DHCP server as standard. I migrated to from ISC to Kea in OPNSense and it was relatively painless, and it's been working well since. No complaints here, but my setup is pretty vanilla.
I can't comment on the DNS integration, but I might look a bit deeper because it sounds useful.
ISC shut down the DHCP project in 2022 (and afaik, nobody has taken it up as a fork), so it's less of a OPNSense decision and more of an ISC decision. Nothing is stopping anyone from continuing to user ISC dhcp for a long time, but people are reluctant.
It sounded like they were encouraging dnsmasq for home use. I migrated to that successfully. My DHCPv6 is working flawlessly now whereas I was never able to get it running smoothly/persistently on ISC.
I understand Kea has more features so I'm a little curious what I'm missing.
I, too, was under the impression that Kea is now mostly out and they're going the dnsmasq route.
There were open issues about some basic features with Kea, too: https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/7475
In my homelab I've been using very barebones options (the one built into systemd-networkd as well as the dhcp server built into RouterOS) and never found myself needing a web interface, a database or anything… really. It has been sufficient to add the couple dozen static allocations to the configuration files and forget DHCP exists. Even HA is not something I found myself wanting as nodes will retain their lease well over the period of downtime incurred during botched upgrades.
How fancy does a network needs to be before this starts making sense? Who are the target audience for this project?
I’ve hit twice over the last year where it was needed. Though in one case, it’s because a server that was physically old enough to vote happened to be handling dhcp and dns. I set the other, only slightly less old, server to be primary on both but left the original functioning just in case with failed.
The main need I had was for a bank. Network functionality is obviously highly important there. Windows updates impacted the dhcp service on one server, which wasn’t an obvious thing till leases started running out the following morning. Multiple DC’s, so set up for HA to avoid issues in the future. It’s almost never needed but great to have when total uptime is key to operations.
We use Kea at work and make extensive use of its hooks system to customise what leases we give out, and in which of our 8 datacenters. Our infrastructure is hundreds of thousands of machines and Kea's distributed nature makes it a breeze.
Kea has broken with my config twice now over as many years when upgrading versions. I regret jumping from ISC-DHCPd for my 2023 PF-box reinstall just because they called it “EOL”
I assume it's just how pfsense is using Kea, but moving to this has been a bit regretful. Since moving from the legacy one to Kea, my static reservations don't work first time. Clients get given an address from the pool and then some time later (hours) get their static reservation. No clue why, from reading doc it seems like this is intended behaviour and that static reservations are discouraged??
On isc-dhcp, clients got their static reservation straight up.
Do you mean "Static Mappings"?
I have a couple dozen of those and had no issue during my pfSense upgrade.
I also rely heavily on two settings in "Services > DHCP Server":
- [x] Enable DNS Registration (leases will auto-register with the DNS Resolver)
- [x] Enable Early DNS Registration (static mappings will auto-register with the DNS Resolver)
I do not use the "Create a static ARP table entry for this MAC & IP Address pair." option for individual static mappings.
I migrated my home router over to Kea and was distinctly unimpressed - it just carried on working 8) I do run a pretty full on pfBlocker-NG. I run quite a few other pfs too (31).
At work I have a CARP cluster of two elderly Dell servers with a lot of NICS. I have a change logged for next week.
unfortunate that you can't start it without the ethernet interface in UP state. if you start it while the ethernet cable is disconnected, it will start the daemon but not actually "listen" on the device, even after the cable gets plugged in.
my solution: create a bridge with your ethernet device and add a dummy device and UP the said summy device, thereby UPing the bridge.
I've deployed Kea in some interesting applications. I quite like its failover options for redundancy purposes.
Definitely has a learning curve for odd devices that "support" DHCP, but I've been happy with how it works, its outputs, and how it can easily be segmented.
Looking at the CVE history, first "LTS" release 3.0.0 was quickly replaced by 3.0.1
https://kb.isc.org/docs/cve-2025-40779
"CVE-2025-40779: Kea crash upon interaction between specific client options and subnet selection"
https://github.com/isc-projects/kea/commit/0afd42b5dfb2e547b...
unprotected null pointer use, kea is in C++
Shall we call Rust Evangelism Task Force and Rewrite in Rust in 3 femtoseconds?
Actually, yes, that'd be great!
I ran my own home router and I used Kea and Power DNS using Systemd Containers to provide service for my whole home.
I was really impressed. I think the folks who put it together did a good job of addressing the major warts of my experience with isc-dhcp-server.
I'm sure it's a tremendous challenge writing software that's supposed to live up to modern expectations while still attempting to deliver on all of the legacy dependents and their unique use cases.
Makes me think of that article on how Cloudflare wrote their own Golang DNS Server and like some 900 whopping people use LOC records but they still support it
I use dnsmasq mostly for its fantastic integration with DNS.
DHCP and DNS go hand in hand in a network, I really struggle to understand why they are not more integrated in otherwise great solutions (such as kea)
There's places where integration makes sense (home network/small business with tens of clients/devices) and places where dedicated engines make sense (ISPs, large enterprise VPNs, the Internet).
dnsmasq is awesome if you want a one-stop shop for DHCP and DNS for sure.
Yeah. Nowadays I use pi-hole which is dnsmasq underneath and use it with unbound.
Works great. Minimal fuss, efficient setup, little maintenance, I don't have to understand the guts. Everything on my local network is addressable.
Ad blocking at the router is also something you don't want live without once you've gone there but pi-hole is a great solution even if you don't want that.
I'm curious why you'd use pi-hole in combination with Unbound instead of using blocklists and stats that Unbound has built in?
I use Pihole as well (even tried to synchronize two for HA but I gave up). It is fantastic.
What worries me with dnsmasq is that it is a personal project maintained on a personal git (by a great person!). Sure, one can fork and whatnot but without several people participating it can fade out pretty quickly.
dnsmasq is great. The best part is that you can assign the same IP to multiple interfaces on the same device (to multiple MAC addresses) which drives network purists crazy and is no longer supported by systemd-networkd (because they are puritans). Separated DHCP/DNS can not do this. I will look into kea and whether they can do this.
Whatever you're doing can probably be done faster and simpler with bridge interfaces.
What's the use case for this?
Going between wired and wireless is one example.
I used to (when I did that more) set up a bond of my wireless and ethernet devices, so when ethernet was plugged in it was preferred, otherwise it would use wireless. It was pretty seamless, and provided the same MAC on both networks.
LWN discussion of some 2025 CVE on kea: https://lwn.net/Articles/1023093/
Comments are less positive than here on HN.
OPNSense deprecated (is deprecating?) the included ISC DHCP server and now has the Kea DHCP server as standard. I migrated to from ISC to Kea in OPNSense and it was relatively painless, and it's been working well since. No complaints here, but my setup is pretty vanilla.
I can't comment on the DNS integration, but I might look a bit deeper because it sounds useful.
ISC shut down the DHCP project in 2022 (and afaik, nobody has taken it up as a fork), so it's less of a OPNSense decision and more of an ISC decision. Nothing is stopping anyone from continuing to user ISC dhcp for a long time, but people are reluctant.
OpenBSD’s dhcpd(8) is apparently basic on the one from the ISC: https://man.openbsd.org/dhcpd
Not sure this counts as a fork or when it was “reworked” by OpenBSD, though.
It sounded like they were encouraging dnsmasq for home use. I migrated to that successfully. My DHCPv6 is working flawlessly now whereas I was never able to get it running smoothly/persistently on ISC.
I understand Kea has more features so I'm a little curious what I'm missing.
I, too, was under the impression that Kea is now mostly out and they're going the dnsmasq route. There were open issues about some basic features with Kea, too: https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/7475
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In my homelab I've been using very barebones options (the one built into systemd-networkd as well as the dhcp server built into RouterOS) and never found myself needing a web interface, a database or anything… really. It has been sufficient to add the couple dozen static allocations to the configuration files and forget DHCP exists. Even HA is not something I found myself wanting as nodes will retain their lease well over the period of downtime incurred during botched upgrades.
How fancy does a network needs to be before this starts making sense? Who are the target audience for this project?
I’ve hit twice over the last year where it was needed. Though in one case, it’s because a server that was physically old enough to vote happened to be handling dhcp and dns. I set the other, only slightly less old, server to be primary on both but left the original functioning just in case with failed.
The main need I had was for a bank. Network functionality is obviously highly important there. Windows updates impacted the dhcp service on one server, which wasn’t an obvious thing till leases started running out the following morning. Multiple DC’s, so set up for HA to avoid issues in the future. It’s almost never needed but great to have when total uptime is key to operations.
We use Kea at work and make extensive use of its hooks system to customise what leases we give out, and in which of our 8 datacenters. Our infrastructure is hundreds of thousands of machines and Kea's distributed nature makes it a breeze.
I've been running Kea at dayjob in production for the last 5-ish years, setup in a HA manner. It's worked solidly.
I’m wondering if this fixes the issue in pfsense which causes the Unbound DNS server to restart every time a new dhcp lease is created.
Kea has broken with my config twice now over as many years when upgrading versions. I regret jumping from ISC-DHCPd for my 2023 PF-box reinstall just because they called it “EOL”
I assume it's just how pfsense is using Kea, but moving to this has been a bit regretful. Since moving from the legacy one to Kea, my static reservations don't work first time. Clients get given an address from the pool and then some time later (hours) get their static reservation. No clue why, from reading doc it seems like this is intended behaviour and that static reservations are discouraged??
On isc-dhcp, clients got their static reservation straight up.
Do you mean "Static Mappings"? I have a couple dozen of those and had no issue during my pfSense upgrade. I also rely heavily on two settings in "Services > DHCP Server":
- [x] Enable DNS Registration (leases will auto-register with the DNS Resolver)
- [x] Enable Early DNS Registration (static mappings will auto-register with the DNS Resolver)
I do not use the "Create a static ARP table entry for this MAC & IP Address pair." option for individual static mappings.
Hopefully this helps you in your troubleshooting.
I’ve got 60+ static reservations across multiple VLANs and don’t see this behavior. I’m not sure where you read it’s expected behavior, but it isn’t.
I’m guessing it’s something in you’re config.
on pfsense?
> Clients get given an address from the pool and then some time later (hours) get their static reservation.
I'm still on isc-dhcp (and not pfsense either) but is there a chance you have two DHCP servers running?
Once day I will stop procrastinating and migrate my pfsense boxes over to Kea. I hope I like it.
I'll be thrilled if the expected DNS integration works and I don't get the side effects I get now from ISC.
I migrated my home router over to Kea and was distinctly unimpressed - it just carried on working 8) I do run a pretty full on pfBlocker-NG. I run quite a few other pfs too (31).
At work I have a CARP cluster of two elderly Dell servers with a lot of NICS. I have a change logged for next week.
unfortunate that you can't start it without the ethernet interface in UP state. if you start it while the ethernet cable is disconnected, it will start the daemon but not actually "listen" on the device, even after the cable gets plugged in.
my solution: create a bridge with your ethernet device and add a dummy device and UP the said summy device, thereby UPing the bridge.
I've deployed Kea in some interesting applications. I quite like its failover options for redundancy purposes.
Definitely has a learning curve for odd devices that "support" DHCP, but I've been happy with how it works, its outputs, and how it can easily be segmented.
Can you expand on the applications you deployed kea in?
Migrated from ISC to Kea on OPNSense and zero issue so far
Moved a large enterprise deployment to kea and it’s been fantastic. Very easy to troubleshoot.
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