Software Support

The planned EOL date for every release is noted on the page where you download the software, and our software support policy is documented here. If you have just taken over an existing BIND or DHCP installation, you might want to check our list of published security vulnerabilities to ensure your implementation is not vulnerable.

BIND Documentation consists of the Administrators Reference Manual (ARM), and a Doxygen doc included in the source code.

Quick links to current BIND Administrator Reference Manuals

• BIND 9.10
• BIND 9.9

ISC DHCP is distributed with man pages that are available on-line in the installed product. A subset of these man pages have been turned into a downloadable document for those who want to scan them before installing the software.

DHCP 4.3.1 pdf snapshot

Our on-line Knowledge Base features shorter articles on our software, and includes all our release notes. We also publish a page of links with community-provided How-to’s, free software tools, and information on the most useful published books.

BIND and ISC DHCP are open source software. Community support is available on our three public mailing lists: bind-users, dhcp-users and Kea-users.  Mail-archive.com, which is not affiliated with ISC, hosts searchable archives of bind-users and dhcp-users if you want to look and see if your question has already been asked and answered on the list. We recommend that all BIND users subscribe to the bind-announce mailing list, to receive notices of any security vulnerabilities, as well as notices of new versions available. For DHCP users the equivalent list is dhcp-announce and for Kea it is Kea-announce.

We also provide expert professional support by annual subscription. You can reach our support team by filling out the form here.  We have a basic subscription level that includes only advance notification of a security vulnerability (with a patch), for those that want to support the open source team but don’t need technical advice. Our support team works during regular business hours, 8 – 5 EST Monday- Friday, excepting holidays, with differing response time guarantees depending on the subscription level.  However, a support customer experiencing a critical problem contacting our support team will get a call back from someone on the duty roster 7 x 24, who will begin working the issue immediately (again, depending on the subscription level). Support subscriptions are the primary way that we fund our operations, including the maintenance of the open source. If you cannot afford to subscribe for commercial support, please consider making a donation to help sustain the team that maintains the software.

From time to time we do public webinars on various topics of interest. Some of these many be helpful in understanding our software features and recommended operating procedures. We also frequently attend and present at industry conferences and events.

Everyone can help contribute to open source quality by submitting complete and accurate bug reports. To report a bug, please submit a Bug Report Form, or submit via email to

• BIND: [email protected]
• DHCP: [email protected]

If you wish to submit a feature request, email us at:

• BIND: [email protected]
• DHCP: [email protected]

BIND security is critical to the Internet Infrastructure. If you think you may be seeing a potential security vulnerability in BIND (for example, a crash with REQUIRE, INSIST, or ASSERT failure), please report it immediately to [email protected] and do not post it on the public mailing list.