What's new in v4

[Alan DeKok]

On Oct 9, 2023, at 9:28 AM, Hermann Lauer <Hermann.Lauer at uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:
> What are the improvements in DHCPv4?'

  Mainly that it's no longer a hack pretending to be RADIUS.  It's just 100% DHCPv4.

  Other improvements are that complex structures are now trivial.  They're used much more in DHCP than in RADIUS.

  The server now supports structures in dictionaries (it's not perfect, but it works).  It will then automatically decode the structures into attributes.  The structures can contain bit fields, too.  It all Just Works.

https://freeradius.org/documentation/freeradius-server/4.0.0/reference/dictionary/struct.html

> I'm looking currently into PXE booting in 3.2.1 to understand the differences
> to ISC DHCP Server - some attributes used in PXE may be magic.

  Not in v4.  Pretty much everything easy.

  v4 also supports an experimental ISC DHCP module.  It will read common (i.e. simple) ISC files to define options, and implement the policies:

https://freeradius.org/documentation/freeradius-server/4.0.0/raddb/mods-available/isc_dhcp.html

  I did a check against Kea DHCP the other day.  FreeRADIUS v4 is 2/3 the size of Kea in code.  But it supports more protocols, more databases, it has a real policy language, and it's more configurable.

  Alan DeKok.