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DHCP Option Concatenation Considerations
draft-tojens-dhcp-option-concat-considerations-01

Document Type Expired Internet-Draft (individual)
Expired & archived
Authors Tommy Jensen , Milan Justel
Last updated 2025-09-04 (Latest revision 2025-03-03)
RFC stream (None)
Intended RFC status (None)
Formats
Additional resources GitHub Repository
Stream Stream state (No stream defined)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
RFC Editor Note (None)
IESG IESG state Expired
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This Internet-Draft is no longer active. A copy of the expired Internet-Draft is available in these formats:

Abstract

DHCP has a length limit of 255 on individual options because of its one-byte length field for options. To accommodate longer options, splitting option data across multiple instances of the same Option Type is defined by RFC 3396. However, this mechanism was defined to require support for all option types. This has led to real-world implementations in the years since the RFC was published to deviate from these requirements to avoid breaking basic functionality. This document updates RFC 3396 to be more flexible regarding when DHCP agents are required to concatenate options to reflect deployement experiences.

Authors

Tommy Jensen
Milan Justel

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)