NETCONF Access Agent
download ndCONF Eval Agent Development Package
A complete ndCONF NETCONF Agent is constructed by assembling the NuDesign’s NETCONF Access Agent component together with the YANG Datastore Server, extended using NuDesign’s ndCONF Builder, and instrumenting a set of YANG modules pre-selected during the code generation process.
The Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) protocol has been defined by IETF to provide a programmable mechanism for remote, transactional management of configuration Datastores built into the networking devices. Each datastore contains a collection of configuration data that can be used as a source or target of the configuration-related operations.
The device always has a “running” datastore and may have a “candidate” configuration datastore where configuration changes can be made that will not affect the device until a “commit-configuration” operation is performed. It may also have a specific “startup” configuration datastore that is copied into “running” datastore during the device start-up operation. These are development time options, and these capabilities are built into the NuDesign’s NETCONF / YANG ndCONF SDK libraries.
NETCONF uses a YANG data objects description language to build specific data models contained in the YANG modules describing the content templates and operations on datastore configurations. The YANG modules are hierarchies of organizational containers, lists of data nodes, and data-node-forming leafs of the data tree. The operations use the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) structures for communications between NETCONF Client and NETCONF Server (Agent). The predefined NETCONF operations such as copy, edit, delete, get, commit and lock / unlock configurations can be extended via custom YANG modules.
The NETCONF Access Agent, along with YANG Datastore Server implement the following IETF’s standards:
- rfc6241 – NETCONF Protocol
- rfc6242 – NETCONF over SSH
- rfc6022 – NETCONF Monitoring
- rfc6021 – YANG and INET Data Types
- rfc5277 – NETCONF Event Notifications
- rfc6470 – NETCONF Base Notifications
- rfc6536 – NETCONF Access Control
The YANG Datastore Server implements the datastore using rfc6020 defined YANG modeling language.