Network Configuration (netconf)

Interim Meeting of 2016-05-18

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Chair(s):

Operations and Management Area Area Director(s):

Assigned Area Director



Recordings:

No Recordings Present

Meeting Slides:

No Current Internet-Drafts

No Request for Comments

Charter (as of 2015-10-16):

Configuration of networks of devices has become a critical requirement
for operators in today's highly interconnected networks. Large and small
operators alike have developed their own mechanisms or have used vendor
specific mechanisms to transfer configuration data to and from a device
and to examine device state information which may impact the
configuration. Each of these mechanisms may be different in various
aspects, such as session establishment, user authentication,
configuration data exchange, and error responses.

The NETCONF protocol (RFC 6241) provides mechanisms to install,
manipulate, and delete the configuration of network devices. NETCONF is
based on the secure transport (SSH is mandatory to implement while TLS
is an optional transport) and uses an XML-based data representation. The
NETCONF protocol is data modeling language independent, but YANG (RFC
6020) is the recommended NETCONF modeling language, which introduces
advanced language features for configuration management.

In the current phase of NETCONF's incremental development the workgroup
will focus on following items:

1. Provide a Server Configuration YANG module for both NETCONF and
RESTCONF.

2. Develop RESTCONF, a protocol based on NETCONF in terms of
capabilities, but over HTTPs and with some REST characteristics, for
accessing YANG data in NETCONF datastores. An "ordered edit list"
approach is needed (the YANG patch) to provide client developers with a
simpler edit request format that can be more efficient and also allow
more precise client control of the transaction procedure than existing
mechanisms. The YANG patch operation, based on the HTTP PATCH method,
will be prepared in a separate draft.

In addition develop a YANG library, which identifies the information
about all YANG modules used by a server. Furthermore develop a
collection resource for the RESTCONF protocol to provide enhanced
filtering features for the retrieval of data nodes with the GET method.

RESTCONF should not deviate from the NETCONF capabilities unless proper
justification is provided and documented. The RESTCONF work will
consider requirements suggested by the other working groups (for example
I2RS).

3. Develop a zero touch configuration document (a technique to
establish a secure network management relationship between a newly
delivered network device configured with just its factory default
settings, and the Network Management System), specific to the NETCONF
use case.

4. Develop a subscription and push mechanism that allows client
applications to request notifications for changes in the datastore.
These updates will be pushed by the server to the client based on a
subscription policy.

5. Update RFC 6536 (NETCONF Access Control Model) to introduce access
control rights associated with actions.

6. Enhance RFC 5277 with the ability to delete subscriptions without
closing the client session, to modify existing subscriptions, and to
have multiple subscriptions on a established client session. These
changes should not affect older clients that do not support these
particular subscription requirements. The RPCs and the data models in
RFC 5277 should be converted to YANG.

Based on the implementation, deployment experience and interoperability
testing, the WG aims to produce a NETCONF status report in a later
stage. The result may be clarifications for RFC6241 and RFC6242 and
addressing any reported errata.