[Nsi-wg] ietf NETCONF group

[Victor Reijs]

Hello Jerry,

Jerry Sobieski wrote:
>  From what I know of the JUNOS implementation, the NETCONF API seems 
> completely Juniper centric.  And therefore JUNOS centric.   I.e. it 
> really is focused on configuring IP routers and Juniper routers at that...

What I understand is that NETCONF only defines the sequence of the 
messages, not the actual content of the message (say commands). So 
Cisco's and Juniper's NETCONF both use the same message method, but 
indeed one can not configure a Cisco using a Juniper string of commands 
(or the other way around). Standardizing also the string of commands (or 
the objects, but you need the results of this workgroup I assume) would 
be better.
In MANTICORE-II project we use NETCONF for communicating with Cisco and 
Juniper (but one needs to adjust the content of the message/commands for 
each device, so we have two different manufacturer proxies still).

> So two questions:
>     a) Does anyone know of any NETCONF type of package that portends to 
> doing this type of of architectural domain autoconfiguration?,

When we implemented a layer 2 UCLP system to configure Cisco equipment 
(ethernet switches and Ethernet over MPLS) we used the first NETCONF 
implementations of Cisco (a few years ago now).
We are at present incorporating Juniper and Cisco [Nexus] NETCONF proxy 
in our logical IP service project (MANTICORE-II), to provide virtualised 
IP networks to users. It uses the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) 
framework, so it is (or should be) integrated with layer 0,1,3 and 
higher level WebServices (so fits in PaaS [Platform] and SaaS [Software]).

>     and b) Should this effort to develop an automated configuration 
> process for IP devices consider how to define a *generic* device 
> configuration protocol that could be used to cover a broader set of 
> cyber-devices?

Fully agree.

All the best,


Victor

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Victor Reijs, Network Development Manager
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