Subject: WG Review: Recharter of Network Configuration (netconf)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 10:02:21 -0500

A modified charter has been submitted for the Network Configuration
(netconf) working group in the Operations and Management Area of the IETF.
  The IESG has not made any determination as yet.  The modified charter is
provided below for informational purposes only.  Please send your comments
to the IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by November 15, 2007.

Network Configuration (netconf)
================================

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s): TBD

Operations and Management Area Director(s):
Dan Romascanu <[email-masked]>

Ronald Bonica <[email-masked]>

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

Technical Advisor(s):
Wesley Hardaker <[email-masked]>

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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.

A second phase of incremental development of NETCONF will include the
following items:

1. Fine-grain locking: The base NETCONF protocol only provides a lock
for the entire configuration datastore, which is not deemed to meet
important operational and security requirements. The NETCONF working
group will produce a standards-track RFC specifying a mechanism for
fine-grain locking of the NETCONF configuration datastore.

(The initial draft will be based on
draft-lengyel-ngo-partial-lock-00.txt barring additional contributions
from the community.)

2. NETCONF monitoring: It is considered best practice for IETF working
groups to include management of their protocols within the scope of the
solution they are providing. NETCONF does not provide this capability.
The NETCONF working group will produce a standards-track RFC with
mechanisms allowing NETCONF itself to be used to monitor some aspects of
NETCONF operation.

(The initial draft will be based on
draft-chisholm-netconf-monitoring-00.txt barring additional
contributions from the community.)

3. Schema advertisement: Currently the NETCONF protocol is able to
advertise which protocol features are supported on a particular
netconf-capable device. However, there is currently no way to discover
which XML Schema are supported on the device. The NETCONF working group
will produce a standards-track RFC with mechanisms making this discovery
possible.

This item may be merged with "NETCONF monitoring" into a single
document.

(The initial draft will be based on
draft-scott-netconf-schema-query-00.txt barring additional contributions
from the community.)

4. NETCONF over TLS - based on implementation experience there is a need
for a standards track document to define NETCONF over TLS as an optional
transport for NETCONF

(The initial draft will be based on
draft-badra-tls-netconf-04.txt barring additional contributions from the
community.)

The following are currently not considered in scope for re-chartering at
this time, but may be candidates for work when there is community
consensus to take them on. Individual submissions are being encouraged.

o Access Control requirements
o General improvements to the base protocol o NETCONF access to
SMI-based MIB data o The Bill Fenner problem: Address real or perceived
issue that "giving SSH for NETCONF gives full SSH access to the box"

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
December 2007 -00 draft for NETCONF Monitoring December 2007 -00 draft
for Schema Advertisement
December 2007 -00 draft for Fine Grain Locking
December 2007 -00 draft for NETCONF over TLS
March 2008 - Early Review of client authentication approach (for NETCONF
over TLS) with the security community at IETF 71
August 2008 - WG Last Call on NETCONF Monitoring after IETF72
August 2008 - WG Last Call on Schema Advertisement after IETF72
August 2008 - WG Last Call on Fine Grain Locking after IETF72
August 2008 - WG Last Call on NETCONF over TLS after IETF72
October 2008 Send four documents to the IESG for consideration as
proposed standards

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