# Kea 2.5.4 Release Notes, November 29, 2023 Welcome to Kea 2.5.4, the fifth monthly release of the 2.5 development series. As with any other development release, use this with caution: development releases are not recommended for production use. Kea is a DHCP implementation developed by Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) that features DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 servers with DNS update and a REST API; optional database support (MySQL and PostgreSQL); optional RADIUS, Kerberos, YANG/NETCONF, and GSS-TSIG support; and much more. Kea provides extensive management capabilities, including but not limited to: TLS support, Role-Based Access Control, run-time configuration monitoring and updates via a REST API, host reservations, and client classification. The text below references issue numbers. For more details, visit the Kea GitLab page at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea/-/issues. For details about Docker issues, visit the page at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea-docker/-/issues/. For details about packaging, visit the page at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea-packaging/-/issues/. The following bugfixes and features have been implemented since the previous release, version 2.5.3: 1. **Ping check**: One of the last ISC DHCP features that was missing in Kea is ping check; starting with this release, it is now available in Kea as a subscriber-only hook. The basic idea is that the Kea DHCP server, before handing out an IPv4 lease, attempts to ping the address to be offered. If it receives a response, it marks the lease as being declined and discards the offer. Pings are not 100% reliable due to access technologies, firewalls, broken clients, and other factors, but in some deployments ping check might be very helpful. This feature is considered experimental at this stage, and it currently requires multi-threading to be enabled. It is suspected that this version may interfere with High Availability and Forensic Logging hooks; this will be an area for testing in the coming weeks. Please use with caution and report any issues you observe [#2781, #3084, #3165]. 2. **RADIUS**: The new RADIUS hook library `libdhcp_radius.so` is now functional and has feature parity with the old RADIUS hook library `libdhcp_old_radius.so`. There are a few differences that come from using Kea's own RADIUS client as opposed to the FreeRADIUS client; they are documented in the ARM. This is the last release that contains the old RADIUS hook library [#2442, #3042, #3081, #3104, #3105, #3127]. 3. **Thread pool improvements**: Kea is now able to pause and resume threads, instead of stopping and restarting them, resulting in greater efficiency [#1599, #3142]. 4. **Documentation improvements**: A confusing typo in the documenation for DDNS updates was fixed [#3138]. ## Incompatible Changes None. ## License This version of Kea is released under the Mozilla Public License, version 2.0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0 Some Kea hook libraries are provided under the MPL 2.0; others are licensed with the Kea Hooks Basic Commercial End User License. The source for each hook library includes the applicable license. ## Download Pre-built ISC packages for current versions of the most popular Linux operating systems are available at: https://cloudsmith.io/~isc/repos/ Pre-built Docker images as well as Docker files are available. For details, see: https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea-docker The Kea source and PGP signature for this release may be downloaded from: https://www.isc.org/download The signature was generated with the ISC code-signing key, which is available at: https://www.isc.org/pgpkey ISC provides detailed documentation, including installation instructions and usage tutorials, in the Kea Administrator Reference Manual. Documentation is included with the installation or at https://kea.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html in HTML, PDF, or EPUB formats. ISC maintains a public open source code tree, wiki, issue tracking system, milestone planner, and roadmap at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea. Limitations and known issues with this release can be found at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea/-/wikis/known-issues-list. We ask users of this software to please let us know how it worked for you and what operating system you tested on. Feel free to share your feedback on the Kea Users mailing list (https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/kea-users). We would also like to hear whether the documentation is adequate and accurate. Please open tickets in the Kea GitLab project for bugs, documentation omissions and errors, and enhancement requests. We want to hear from you even if everything worked. ## Support Professional support for Kea is available from ISC. We encourage all professional users to consider this option; Kea maintenance is funded with support subscriptions. For more information on ISC's Kea software support, see https://www.isc.org/support/. Free best-effort support is provided by our user community via a mailing list. Information on all public email lists is available at https://www.isc.org/community/mailing-list. If you have any comments or questions about working with Kea, please share them to the Kea Users list (https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/kea-users). Bugs and feature requests may be submitted via GitLab at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea/-/issues. ## Changes The following summarizes changes and important upgrades since the 2.5.3 release. 2194. [build] razvan The library version numbers have been bumped up for the Kea 2.5.4 development release. (Gitlab #3173) 2193. [func] tmark, piotrek The ping-check hook library is now functional. It provides the ability of kea-dhcp4 to check the availability of an address prior to offering it to a client using ICMP ECHO REQUESTs. (Gitlab #3084) 2192. [func] razvan The packet logging is now more consistent between DHCPv4 and DHCPv6. Also, extra details are now logged. (Gitlab #3109) 2191. [doc] andrei The new RADIUS hook library is now operational. Documentation has been updated. A section about differences to the old RADIUS hook library is included. (Gitlab #2442) And for Kea premium: 185. [func] tmark, piotrek The ping-check hook library is now functional. It provides the ability of kea-dhcp4 to check the availability of an address prior to offering it to a client using ICMP ECHO REQUESTs. (Gitlab #3084) 184. [func] fdupont The new RADIUS hook library is now operational and considered experimental. The callouts have been added for both access and accounting services. Integer constants can now be parsed from a dictionary. (Gitlab #3042, #3081, #3104, #3105, #3127) Thank you again to everyone who assisted us in making this release possible. We look forward to receiving your feedback.