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The Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) is a
network management Network management is the process of administering and managing computer networks. Services provided by this discipline include fault analysis, performance management, provisioning of networks and maintaining quality of service. Network managem ...
protocol developed and standardized by the
IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
. It was developed in the NETCONF working group and published in December 2006 as RFC 4741 and later revised in June 2011 and published as RFC 6241. The NETCONF protocol specification is an Internet Standards Track document. NETCONF provides mechanisms to install, manipulate, and delete the configuration of network devices. Its operations are realized on top of a simple
Remote Procedure Call In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure (subroutine) to execute in a different address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network), which is coded as if it were a normal (l ...
(RPC) layer. The NETCONF protocol uses an
Extensible Markup Language Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
(XML) based data encoding for the configuration data as well as the protocol messages. The protocol messages are exchanged on top of a secure transport protocol. The NETCONF protocol can be conceptually partitioned into four layers: # The Content layer consists of configuration data and notification data. # The Operations layer defines a set of base protocol operations to retrieve and edit the configuration data. # The Messages layer provides a mechanism for encoding remote procedure calls (RPCs) and notifications. # The Secure Transport layer provides a secure and reliable transport of messages between a client and a server. The NETCONF protocol has been implemented in network devices such as routers and switches by some major equipment vendors. One particular strength of NETCONF is its support for robust configuration change using transactions involving a number of devices.


History

The IETF developed the
Simple Network Management Protocol Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behaviour. Devices that typically ...
(SNMP) in the late 1980s and it proved to be a very popular
network management Network management is the process of administering and managing computer networks. Services provided by this discipline include fault analysis, performance management, provisioning of networks and maintaining quality of service. Network managem ...
protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technolog ...
. In the early part of the 21st century it became apparent that in spite of what was originally intended, SNMP was not being used to configure network equipment, but was mainly being used for
network monitoring Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. Network monitorin ...
. In June 2002, the
Internet Architecture Board The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is "a committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and an advisory body of the Internet Society (ISOC). Its responsibilities include architectural oversight of IETF activities, Internet Standards ...
and key members of the IETF's network management community got together with network operators to discuss the situation. The results of this meeting are documented in RFC 3535. It turned out that each network operator was primarily using a different proprietary
command line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...
(CLI) to configure their devices. This had a number of features that the operators liked, including the fact that it was text-based, as opposed to the BER-encoded SNMP. In addition, many equipment vendors did not provide the option to completely configure their devices via SNMP. As operators generally liked to write scripts to help manage their boxes, they found the SNMP CLI lacking in a number of ways. Most notably was the unpredictable nature of the output. The content and formatting of output was prone to change in unpredictable ways. Around this same time,
Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, ...
had been using an XML-based network management approach. This was brought to the IETF and shared with the broader community. Collectively, these two events led the IETF in May 2003 to the creation of the NETCONF working group. This working group was chartered to work on a network configuration protocol, which would better align with the needs of network operators and equipment vendors. The first version of the base NETCONF protocol was published as RFC 4741 in December 2006. Several extensions were published in subsequent years (notifications in RFC 5277 in July 2008, partial locks in RFC 5717 in December 2009, with-defaults in RFC 6243 in June 2011, system notifications in RFC 6470 in February 2012, access control in RFC 6536 in March 2012). A revised version of the base NETCONF protocol was published as RFC 6241 in June 2011.


Protocol layers


Content

The content of NETCONF operations is well-formed XML. Most content is related to
network management Network management is the process of administering and managing computer networks. Services provided by this discipline include fault analysis, performance management, provisioning of networks and maintaining quality of service. Network managem ...
. Subsequently, support for encoding in
JavaScript Object Notation JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...
(JSON) was also added. The NETMOD working group has completed work to define a "human-friendly" modeling language for defining the semantics of operational data, configuration data, notifications, and operations, called
YANG Yang may refer to: * Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy * Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902 * YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration ...
. YANG is defined in RFC 6020 (version 1) and RFC 7950 (version 1.1), and is accompanied by the "Common YANG Data Types" found in RFC 6991. During the summer of 2010, the NETMOD working group was re-chartered to work on core configuration models (system, interface, and routing) as well as work on compatibility with the
SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behaviour. Devices that typically ...
modeling language.


Operations

The base protocol defines the following protocol operations: Basic NETCONF functionality can be extended by the definition of NETCONF capabilities. The set of additional protocol features that an implementation supports is communicated between the server and the client during the capability exchange portion of session setup. Mandatory protocol features are not included in the capability exchange since they are assumed. RFC 4741 defines a number of optional capabilities including :xpath and :validate. Note tha
RFC 6241
obsoletes RFC 4741. A capability to support subscribing and receiving asynchronous event notifications is published in RFC 5277. This document defines the operation, which enables creating real-time and replay subscriptions. Notifications are then sent asynchronously using the construct. It also defines the :interleave capability, which when supported with the basic :notification capability facilitates the processing of other NETCONF operations while the subscription is active. A capability to support partial locking of the running configuration is defined in RFC 5717. This allows multiple sessions to edit non-overlapping sub-trees within the running configuration. Without this capability, the only lock available is for the entire configuration. A capability to monitor the NETCONF protocol is defined in RFC 6022. This document contains a data model including information about NETCONF datastores, sessions, locks, and statistics that facilitates the management of a NETCONF server. It also defines methods for NETCONF clients to discover data models supported by a NETCONF server and defines the operation to retrieve them.


Messages

The NETCONF messages layer provides a simple, transport-independent framing mechanism for encoding * RPC invocations ( messages), * RPC results ( messages), and * event notifications ( messages). Every NETCONF message is a well-formed XML document. An RPC result is linked to an RPC invocation by a message-id attribute. NETCONF messages can be pipelined, i.e., a client can invoke multiple RPCs without having to wait for RPC result messages first. RPC messages are defined in RFC 6241 and notification messages are defined in RFC 5277.


Transport

* NETCONF Protocol over Secure Shell (SSH): rfc:6242 * NETCONF Protocol over Transport Layer Security (TLS) with Mutual X.509 Authentication: rfc:7589


See also

*
YANG Yang may refer to: * Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy * Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902 * YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration ...
* *
Network management Network management is the process of administering and managing computer networks. Services provided by this discipline include fault analysis, performance management, provisioning of networks and maintaining quality of service. Network managem ...
*
Configuration management Configuration management (CM) is a process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. The CM proc ...
*
Network monitoring Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. Network monitorin ...
*
XML Schema An XML schema is a description of a type of Extensible Markup Language, XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed ...


References

{{Reflist Internet protocols Internet Standards Network management System administration Application layer protocols