While some parts of BOOTP have been effectively superseded by the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), which adds the feature of leases, parts of BOOTP are used to provide service to the DHCP protocol.
Historically, BOOTP has also been used for Unix-like diskless workstations to obtain the network location of their boot image, in addition to the IP address assignment.
The BOOTP was first defined in September 1985[1] as a replacement for the Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP), published in June 1984.
[1]: §6 An increasing set of BOOTP vendor information extensions was defined[3][4][5][6] to supply BOOTP clients of relevant information about the network, like default gateway, name server IP address, the domain name, etcetera.
[9] The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) was developed as an extension of BOOTP.