Windows 10 DHCP Client and RFC 3397 (a.k.a. DHCP option 119, Domain Search Option)

dhcpdomain-name-systemwindows 10

Using DHCP option 119, Domain Search Option as documented in RFC 3397 would make my life a lot easier. All the Linux-Machines on my network have supported this option for quite a while, but unfortunately I also have to take several Windows machines into account. Fortunately, they all run Windows 10, so there may yet be hope.

From what I gather Windows versions up to and including Windows 7 still did not comply to the RFC. I believe to have read that Windows 8 didn't either, but I can't find anything to confirm that right now.

But does Windows 10's DHCP client support DHCP option 119?

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TL;DR:
It wasn't supported back then, but it is supported now!

Since the April 2018 Update to Windows 10, its DHCP client has finally gained the ability to handle DHCP option 119 (source), only 16 years after its introduction.

So, years later, the topic came up again, and we've looked into it once more. It was still just as hard to find any information on this topic. This thread (still without an answer) was actually one of the best results our search brought up, so when we found the Microsoft announcement linked above, I decided to leave the answer here for anyone else who might end up here.

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Domain – Which DHCP Client OS Support DHCP Option 119 Domain Suffix Search

I'm constraining my search to Microsoft OS's tonight, for lack of energy. >smile<

Finding a concise list of the DHCP options supported by various Microsoft operating systems has proven to be difficult. The following article shows as being revised in 2006, and references Windows XP in the article text, but claims to only apply up to Windows NT 4.0.

https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/121/Q121005/ (formerly http://support.microsoft.com/kb/121005)

Based on this article, it doesn't appear that any version of Windows referenced in that article supports option 119. I'm seeing postings that seem to indicate that Windows Server 2003 and 2008 do not support option 119, either.

This article indicates that DHCP option 119 doesn't work on Windows 2000 - Windows Server 2003:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/275553

I'll try my Windows 7-based laptop computer in a moment and drop an edit in here with my findings.

DNS resolution problems and DNS suffix search order

After reading this I had a look at a Ubuntu 8.10 installation I've just finished on Virtualbox. resolve.conf contains:

# Generated by NetworkManager
domain ourdomain.local
search ourdomain.local
nameserver 192.168.0.6
nameserver 192.168.0.7

As a result, it handles lookups just fine and I can reach any machine with either the host name or the FQDN. My MacBook also handles lookups just fine, both at work and at home, but I'm unable to check its resolve.conf right now (the screen is broken). Neither the work network (Windows DHCP) nor my home network (Linux DHCP) have option 119. In fact both pass the domain name only as option 15.

The only issue I had getting this to work was that Linux and Mac didn't like it when my home network used a single word domain name. Adding ".local" to the end of it is the only change I had to make.

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Domain – Which DHCP Client OS Support DHCP Option 119 Domain Suffix Search

DNS resolution problems and DNS suffix search order

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