[JoshTriplett]

I've used dhcpcd, and I've seen many other reports from systems using it. It's an improvement over previous DHCP clients, but I'd love to see benchmarks demonstrating its ability to obtain an address in a vaguely timely manner. I have in fact seen piles of benchmarks for networkd, and I look forward to seeing similar benchmarks for the same code in NetworkManager.

In the previous article, I was particularly pleased that NetworkManager is finally starting to integrate good library code rather than spawning off programs and attempting to manage them. That's half the problem with dhcpcd: it really doesn't matter how fast it is, if it doesn't actually integrate well with a broader network management system. (And on most systems I've used, NetworkManager uses and depends on dhclient instead.) I hope to see more where that came from, and it's a toss-up whether networkd or NM will integrate good library-based wireless support first.

As for RFC guidelines, as far as I know the most notable one is one that every sane DHCP client violates, namely the massive timeouts, delays, and backoffs, all written for scenarios in which a thousand systems all come up at the same time and try to get an address over a network comprised largely of tin cans and string. Those guidelines matter very little on modern networks, compared to the cumulative wait time of millions of users on millions of systems.

[vezzy-fnord]

Alright, thank you for your clarification.