Stephen R. van den Berg wrote:
The reason one would not want to use a different DHCP server is because freeradius allows controlling the DHCP server using a RADIUS backend.
No. FreeRADIUS is (pretty much) no longer just a RADIUS server. It's a generic policy && protocol server. It does RADIUS, DHCP, and VMPS. Other protocols are likely to be added: TACACS+, and maybe ARP. The goal for 3.0 (or maybe 3.1) is to move the protocol-specific code into plugin libraries. The server core will know *nothing* about RADIUS.
This allows for more finegrained control over the DHCP responses than most other DHCP servers provide.
Which is exactly the reason why relaying support should be added, too.
DHCP relay functionality, however, is a rather dull and simple task. Just about the only configurable thing about a DHCP relay is the IP address of the upstream DHCP server it relays to. Embedding this functionality in a radius server doesn't give you great benefits. A small program like dhcp-helper does the relaying part just fine (at least as good as, if not better than freeradius).
dhcp-helper hasn't been updated in 3 years. It's Linux only. It doesn't do policies. FreeRADIUS is portable to many different platforms. It does policies. Having a policy-enabled DHCP relay across many platforms is very useful. Alan DeKok.