# Kea DHCP

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/kea-dhcp/

7 people recommended Kea DHCP in Hacker News comments, 4 had mixed feelings and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 12 months, in 1 thread. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

7 of the 7 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Kea DHCP: Modern, open source DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 server”.

**Verdict:** Free, open source DHCP server praised for stable operation and failover support. Critics cite configs breaking on upgrades and missing basic features.

Summary written by Claude from 16 comments.

## Why people recommend it

- Keeps working without fuss (2 comments in the sample): "it's been working well since. No complaints here" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142244)) "it just carried on working" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142268))
- Failover and distributed design (2 comments in the sample): "I quite like its failover options for redundancy purposes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142937)) "Kea's distributed nature makes it a breeze." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46145279))

## What people warn about

- Config breaks on version upgrades (2 comments in the sample): "Kea has broken with my config twice now over as many years when upgrading versions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142696)) "first "LTS" release 3.0.0 was quickly replaced by 3.0.1" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144812))
- Missing basic features like MAC reservations (2 comments in the sample): "Kea, at the time at least, did not do MAC address based IP reservations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46154622)) "There were open issues about some basic features with Kea, too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144783))

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Kea DHCP", https://hackerapproved.com/p/kea-dhcp/ (7 recommend, 4 mixed, 7 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.