Subject: [secdir] [New-work] WG Review: Recharter of Network Configuration (netconf)

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:00:02 -0800 (PST)

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 Thursday, January 22, 2009.

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

Last Modified: 2008-12-16

Current Status: Active Working Group

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/netconf

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

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):
Charlie Kaufman <[email-masked]>

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Description of Working Group:
Charlie Kaufman 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 so 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 support for asynchronous notifications.

The NETCONF protocol is using XML for data encoding purposes, because
XML is a widely deployed standard which is supported by a large number
of applications.

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

The initial work started in 2003 and has already been completed and was
restricted to following items:

  a) NETCONF Protocol Specification, which defines the operational model,

     protocol operations, transaction model, data model requirements,
     security requirements, and transport layer requirements.
  b) NETCONF over SSH Specification: Implementation Mandatory,
  c) NETCONF over BEEP Specification: Implementation Optional,
  d) 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.

  e) NETCONF Notification Specification, which defines mechanisms that
     provide an asynchronous message notification delivery service for
     the NETCONF protocol.  NETCONF Notification is an optional
     capability built on top of the base NETCONF definition and
     provides the capabilities and operations necessary to support
     this service.

  The NETCONF notification specification has been finished now as well.

In the current phase of the incremental development of NETCONF the
workgroup will focus on 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.

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. 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.

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).

   Note: The schema-advertisement material has been merged into the
   NETCONF monitoring document based on WG consensus.

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 the NETCONF protocol.

5. NETCONF default handling: NETCONF today does not define whether
   default values should be returned by the server in replies
   to requests for reading configuration and state data. Different
   clients have different needs to receive or not to receive
   default data. The NETCONF working group will produce a
   standards-track RFC defining a mechanism that allows
   NETCONF clients to control whether default data is returned
   by the netconf server.

6. NETCONF implementations have shown that the specification in RFC4741
   is not 100% clear and has lead to different interpretations and
implementations. 
   Also some errors have been uncovered. So the WG will do an rfc4741bis
with
   following constraints:

     - bug fixes are to be done
     - clarifications can be done
     - extensions can be done only when needed to fix bugs 
       or inconsistencies (i.e. we are not doing a NETCONF V2)
     - The work can be started based on the discussion in IETF #73 (see
        http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/08nov/slides/netconf-3.pdf).

   Note: A technical errata has been posted on rfc4742. If the work on
   rfc4741bis uncovers any additional fixes/clarifications that need
   to be made to rfc4742, the WG may consider to also do a rfc4742bis
   as part of this work-item.

The following items have been identified as important but are currently
not considered in scope for re-chartering and may be candidates for work
when there is community consensus to take them on:

- NETCONF Notification content
- Access Control requirements
- NETCONF access to SMI-based MIB data

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
Done   Submit final version of NETCONF Notifications document to IESG
            for consideration as Proposed Standard
Done   -00 draft for fine Grain Locking
Done   -00 draft for NETCONF over TLS
Done   -00 draft for NETCONF Monitoring
Done   -00 draft for Schema Advertisement
Done   Early Review of client authentication approach (for NETCONF over
            TLS) with the security community at IETF 71
N.A.     WG Last Call on Schema Advertisement after IETF72
            Schema Advertisement has been merged into Monitoring
Done    WG Last Call on NETCONF over TLS after IETF72
Done    Netconf over TLS to IESG for consideration as Proposed Standards
Dec 2008  WG Last Call on Fine Grain Locking after IETF73
Dec 2008  Send Partial Locking to IESG for consideration as Proposed
Standards
Jan 2009   Initial WG draft for with-defaults capability
Feb 2009   Initial WG draft for rfc4741bis
Mar 2009   WG Last Call on NETCONF Monitoring after IETF73
Apr 2009   WG Last Call on rfc4741bis
Apr 2009   WG Last Call on with-defaults
Jun 2009   rfc4741bis to IESG for considerations as Proposed Standard
Jun 2009   with-defaults capability to IESG for considerations as Proposed
Standard
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