Dear Kea Development Team, I am currently working on migrating configurations from ISC DHCP (dhcpd) to Kea DHCP and encountered a limitation regarding the next-server field.
In ISC DHCP, it is valid to specify either an IP address or a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for the next-server directive, as referenced in the dhcpd.conf man page: https://linux.die.net/man/5/dhcpd.conf However, in Kea, the next-server field under subnet4 appears to accept only IPv4 addresses. If an FQDN is used (e.g., "next-server": " pxe.boot.example.com"), the configuration fails to parse and returns an error like: *2025-06-12 13:35:40.228 ERROR [kea-dhcp4.dhcp4/1.140187402663808] DHCP4_CONFIG_LOAD_FAIL configuration error using **file: /etc/config/kea4.conf**, reason: subnet configuration failed: invalid parameter next-server : *pxe.boot.example.com*(/etc/config/kea4.conf:169:24) * This becomes a compatibility issue during migration, especially in environments that rely on DNS to resolve boot server IPs dynamically. However, ISC DHCP (dhcpd) supports both IP addresses and FQDNs in the next-server field, as documented here: https://linux.die.net/man/5/dhcpd.conf [image: image.png] Is there any plan to support FQDNs in Kea for the next-server field, similar to how ISC DHCP handles it? FQDN support can be useful in dynamic environments where the boot server’s IP address may change and is managed via DNS. I'm looking forward to hearing back from you Regards, .Dipesh
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