The paper studies the H-2 optimal control for discrete-time systems under the constraint that the information exchange between the sensor- and actuator-side parts of the controller is intermittent, a priori unknown, and independent of the process. A closed-form analytic solution to the problem is derived. The solution is based on two standard algebraic Riccati equations and is readily implementable. An implementation maintaining optimality of the controller under packet losses, which can be modeled by the intermittent communication framework, is also proposed. On the technical side, the paper reveals an issue related to the need for extending the time-varying error system to the whole discrete time axis Z in order to solve the corresponding H-2 model-matching problem and proposes a procedure to resolve it. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.