Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 8, 2026

Kea (software)

Kea is an open-source DHCP server developed by the Internet Systems Consortium, authors of ISC DHCP, also known as DHCPd. Kea and ISC DHCP are both implementations of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), a set of standards established by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to automatically assign IP addresses. Kea software is distributed in source code form on ISC's website, and both the source code and a variety of different OS packages are available on Cloudsmith. Kea is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

Last revised
Jun 8, 2026
Read time
≈ 2 min
Length
492 w
Citations
10
Source
Wikipedia ↗
ISC Kea
Original authorsTomek Mrugalski and Marcin Siodelski
DeveloperInternet Systems Consortium
Initial release2014 (2014)
Stable release
LTS:3.0.31Edit this on Wikidata / 25 March 2026 (25 March 2026)
2:2.6.52Edit this on Wikidata / 25 March 2026 (25 March 2026)
Preview release
3.1.93Edit this on Wikidata / 27 May 2026 (27 May 2026)
Written inC++
Operating systemBSD, Linux, macOS
TypeDHCP server
LicenseMPL 2.0
Websitewww.isc.org/kea/ Edit this at Wikidata
Repositorygitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea

Kea is an open-source DHCP server developed by the Internet Systems Consortium, authors of ISC DHCP, also known as DHCPd. Kea and ISC DHCP are both implementations of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), a set of standards established by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to automatically assign IP addresses. Kea software is distributed in source code form on ISC's website4, and both the source code and a variety of different OS packages are available on Cloudsmith5. Kea is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.6

The Kea distribution includes a DHCPv4 server, a DHCPv6 server, and a Dynamic DNS (DDNS) server. Significant features include: support for IPv6 prefix delegation, host reservations (which may be optionally stored in a separate back end database), Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) boot, client classification, shared networks, and high-availability (failover pairs). Kea can store leases locally in a memfile, or in a PostgreSQL or MySQL database.78 Kea has a supported API for writing optional extensions, using 'hooks'.9

The release of Kea 3.0.0 in June 2025 marked the first Long-Term Support version of the Kea DHCP software, meant to be supported for three years.10

Kea has a graphical management application, called Stork, that integrates an agent running on the Kea server, an exporter to a Prometheus time-series data store, a Grafana template for data visualization, and the Stork web dashboard. Like Kea, Stork is licensed under the MPL 2.0 license. The Stork dashboard provides a simple graphical display for managing one or many Kea servers. Current features include server status, pool utilization, high-availability status, host reservations, and leases per second. Via the integration with Grafana it also provides detailed statistics on DHCP messages over time. Stork was first released in 2014, and features are being added rapidly in monthly releases.

References

References

  1. "Kea 3.0.3 Vulnerability Release Notes, March 25, 2026".
  2. "Kea 2.6.5 Vulnerability Release Notes, March 25, 2026".
  3. "Kea 3.1.9 Release Notes, May 27, 2026".
  4. "ISC's website". Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. Retrieved 25 March 2026.
  5. "ISC's Cloudsmith repository". Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. Retrieved 25 March 2026.
  6. "This project is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0". 26 January 2026.
  7. "DHCP Infrastructure Evolution at Facebook and the Importance of Designing Stateless Services". SREcon15 Europe. USENIX. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  8. "Using ISC Kea DHCP in our data centers". f code. Facebook. 21 July 2015. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  9. "Kea Development". Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. Archived from the original on 13 November 2016. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
  10. "Kea 3.0, our first LTS version". ISC. Retrieved 25 June 2025.
External links