Lighthouse
Lighthouse is a custom, enterprise-grade DHCP server — RFC-compliant DHCPv4 and DHCPv6, built to run 24/7 without crashing, on native Ubuntu and native Windows from a single codebase. It's written from scratch in Rust (memory-safe, "cannot crash"), and ships with a modern web UI, RBAC, dynamic DNS, PXE, and high availability — no extra daemons or premium add-ons.
Why it exists
Every other option forces a tradeoff: ISC Kea / dhcpd / dnsmasq are Unix-only; Windows Server DHCP is Windows-only; the C/C++ engines carry crash risk; and few ship a first-class operator UI. Lighthouse runs natively on both operating systems, is memory-safe, and is operator-first out of the box. (It uses ISC Kea as a conformance reference, not a dependency.)
What's in the box
- DHCPv4 (RFC 2131/2132, full option codec, relay/option 82) and independent DHCPv6 (RFC 8415 — stateful address assignment + prefix delegation).
- Reservations, client classification, and class-restricted pools.
- Dynamic DNS (RFC 2136 + TSIG) and PXE (arch-aware boot + bundled read-only TFTP).
- A web UI with RBAC, a REST API, and Prometheus metrics.
- File-based by default; optional PostgreSQL backend enabling active-active HA.
Components
| Binary | Role |
|---|---|
lighthoused | The DHCP engine. |
lighthouse-mgmtd | Management service — web UI + REST API. |
lighthouse | Admin CLI. |
lighthouse-ddnsd | Dynamic DNS agent (optional). |
lighthouse-tftpd | Read-only TFTP for PXE (optional). |
Next steps
- Getting started — install and serve your first lease.
- Concepts — the DHCP model: subnets, pools, reservations, options, v6.
- Setup & installation — Ubuntu + Windows, ports, service, first run.
- Configuration — the TOML config reference.
- Admin UI & API — the console, REST API, CLI, and metrics.
- Operations — lease store, HA, backup, recovery.