Network Configuration (netconf)
-------------------------------

Charter
Last Modified: 2008-01-09

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s):
    Bert Wijnen  <[email protected]>
    Mehmet Ersue  <[email protected]>

Operations and Management Area Director(s):
    Dan Romascanu  <[email protected]>
    Ronald Bonica  <[email protected]>

Operations and Management Area Advisor:
    Dan Romascanu  <[email protected]>

Technical Advisor(s):
    Charlie Kaufman  <[email protected]>

Mailing Lists:
    General Discussion:[email protected]
    To Subscribe:      [email protected]
        In Body:       in msg body: subscribe
    Archive:           https://ops.ietf.org/lists/netconf

Description of Working Group:

Wes Hardaker is Technical Advisor for Security Matters

Configuration of networks of devices has become a critical requirement
for operators in today's highly interoperable networks. Operators from
large to small have developed their own mechanisms or used vendor
specific mechanisms to transfer configuration data to and from a
device, and for examining 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 Working Group is chartered to produce a protocol suitable
for network configuration, with the following characteristics:

- Provides retrieval mechanisms which can differentiate between
configuration data and non-configuration data
- Is extensible enough that vendors will provide access to all
configuration data on the device using a single protocol
- Has a programmatic interface (avoids screen scraping and
formatting-related changes between releases)
- Uses a textual data representation, that can be easily
manipulated using non-specialized text manipulation tools.
- Supports integration with existing user authentication methods
- Supports integration with existing configuration database systems
- Supports network wide configuration transactions (with features
such as locking and rollback capability)
- Is as transport-independent as possible
- Provides the following support for asynchronous notifications:
- Specify the <hello> message (capability exchange) details to
support notifications.
- Specify the application mapping details to support notifications.
- Specify the protocol syntax and semantics of a notification message.
- Specify or select a notification content information model.
- Specify a mechanism for controlling the delivery (turn on/off)
of notifications during a session.
- Specify a mechanism for selectively receiving a configurable
subset of all possible notification types.

The Netconf protocol will use XML for data encoding purposes,
because XML is a widely deployed standard which is supported
by a large number of applications. XML also supports hierarchical data
structures.

The Netconf protocol should be independent of the data definition
language and data models used to describe configuration and state
data.

However, the authorization model used in the protocol is dependent on
the data model. Although these issues must be fully addressed to
develop standard data models, only a small part of this work will be
initially addressed. This group will specify requirements for standard
data models in order to fully support the Netconf protocol, such as:

- identification of principals, such as user names or distinguished
names
- mechanism to distinguish configuration from non-configuration data
- XML namespace conventions
- XML usage guidelines

It should be possible to transport the Netconf protocol using several
different protocols. The group will select at least one suitable
transport mechanism, and define a mapping for the selected protocol(s).

The initial work (has completed) and was restricted to the following
items:

- Netconf Protocol Specification, which defines the operational
model, protocol operations, transaction model, data model
requirements, security requirements, and transport layer
requirements.

- Netconf over SSH Specification: Implementation Mandatory;
Netconf over BEEP Specification: Implementation Optional;
Netconf over SOAP Specification: Implementation Optional;
These documents define how the Netconf protocol is used
with each transport protocol selected by the working group, and
how it meets the security and transport layer requirements
of the Netconf Protocol Specification.

Additional Notification work (as described above) will now be
addressed since the initial work has been completed.

An individual submission Internet Draft has been proposed to the WG
as the starting point for the Notification work. The WG shall adopt
the document identified as 'draft-chisholm-netconf-event-01.txt' as
the starting point for this work.

Goals and Milestones:

  Done         Working Group formed

  Done         Submit initial Netconf Protocol draft

  Done         Submit initial Netconf over (transport-TBD) draft

  Done         Begin Working Group Last Call for the Netconf Protocol draft

  Done         Begin Working Group Last Call for the Netconf over
               (transport-TBD) draft

  Done         Submit final version of the Netconf Protocol draft to the IESG

  Done         Submit final version of the Netconf over SOAP draft to the IESG

  Done         Submit final version of the Netconf over BEEP draft to the IESG

  Done         Submit final version of the Netconf over SSH draft to the IESG

  Done         Update charter

  Done         Submit first version of NETCONF Notifications document

  Done         Begin WGLC of NETCONF Notifications document

  Dec 2006       Submit final version of NETCONF Notifications document to IESG
               for consideration as Proposed Standard

  Dec 2007       -00 draft for NETCONF Monitoring

  Dec 2007       -00 draft for Schema Advertisement

  Dec 2007       -00 draft for Fine Grain Locking

  Dec 2007       -00 draft for NETCONF over TLS

  Mar 2008       Early Review of client authentication approach (for NETCONF
               over TLS) with the security community at IETF 71

  Aug 2008       WG Last Call on NETCONF Monitoring after IETF72

  Aug 2008       WG Last Call on Schema Advertisement after IETF72

  Aug 2008       WG Last Call on Fine Grain Locking after IETF72

  Aug 2008       WG Last Call on NETCONF over TLS after IETF72

  Aug 2008       Send four documents to the IESG for consideration as proposed
               standards


Internet-Drafts:

Posted Revised         I-D Title   <Filename>
------ ------- --------------------------------------------
Jan 2006 Nov 2007   <draft-ietf-netconf-notification-11.txt>
               NETCONF Event Notifications

Jan 2008 Jan 2008   <draft-ietf-netconf-tls-00.txt>
               NETCONF over TLS

Jan 2008 Jan 2008   <draft-ietf-netconf-partial-lock-00.txt>
               Partial Lock RPC for NETCONF

Jan 2008 Jan 2008   <draft-ietf-netconf-monitoring-00.txt>
               NETCONF Monitoring Schema

Request For Comments:

 RFC   Stat Published     Title
------- -- ----------- ------------------------------------
RFC4741 PS   Dec 2006    NETCONF Configuration Protocol

RFC4742 PS   Dec 2006    Using the NETCONF Configuration Protocol over Secure
                      Shell (SSH)

RFC4744 PS   Dec 2006    Using the NETCONF Protocol over Blocks Extensible
                      Exchange Protocol (BEEP)

RFC4743 PS   Dec 2006    Using the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) Over
                      the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

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