[Nmc-wg] Netconf in pS

[Jason Zurawski]

Hi Roman;

Thanks for providing this, pretty neat.  Also for reference the NETCONF
RFC is here:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4741

> I'm sending you some info about the investigation work (by Arne
> Oslebo) on Netconf in pS which is being done in Geant3. After a while
> I will add a detailed description from one of project documents but
> it's still under review process so it must wait a bit.
>
> http://software.uninett.no/stager/wiki/netconf

An obvious issue that the author has pointed out to not use NM-WG/NMC-WG
is the lack of documentation both at a protocol and service level, which
is a failing for the pS consortium in general.  Hopefully this will be
rectified soon through this group.

To comment on the subject matter itself, I am having a hard time
justifying in my mind why trying to use a protocol designed for a
similar (but not identical) task is a good idea.  In NETCONF's own words it:

> provides mechanisms to install, manipulate, and delete the
> configuration of network devices

This touches a gray area in perfSONAR that has been the topic of DICE 
meetings in the past, namely managing the service configuration vs the 
measurement configuration. I think there may be a place in perfSONAR for 
this protocol, but I don't believe that exchanging/storing the actual 
data with the NETCONF primitives makes sense.

I will end by noting a reply that Martin has been known to give in the 
past: "its all just XML!".  Maybe we can see a demonstration at the next 
developers meeting to see how valuable this could be.

Thanks;

-jason