The IESG has approved the following document: - 'Experience of implementing NETCONF over SOAP ' <draft-iijima-netconf-soap-implementation-10.txt> as an Informational RFC This document has been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an IETF Working Group. The IESG contact person is Dan Romascanu. A URL of this Internet-Draft is: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iijima-netconf-soap-implementation-10.txt Technical Summary This document describes how the authors developed a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)-based NETCONF client and server. In the case that SOAP is used as a transport protocol for NETCONF, various kinds of development tools are available. By making full use of these tools, developers can significantly reduce their workload. The authors developed an NMS (Network Management System) and network equipment that can deal with NETCONF messages sent over SOAP. This document aims to provide NETCONF development guidelines gained from the experience of implementing a SOAP-based NETCONF client and server. Working Group Summary This document is an individual submission. Presentations were made in the NETCONF Working Group, the NETCONF WG chairs reviewed the document but no formal review was undertaken by the WG. Document Quality The document is based upon the implementation experienced gathered by the authors in implementing RFC 4741 and RFC 4743. The document was reviewed by Dan Romascanu as Area Director, by Mehmet Ersue and Bert Wijnen, co-chairs of the NETCONF WG, and by Stefan Santesson for the security directorate. Personnel This document is an indivudual submission and Dan Romascanu is the shepherding AD. RFC Editor Note RFC Editor, please make the following changes: 1. In the Abstract Section: OLD: This document describes how the authors developed a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)-based NETCONF client and server. When SOAP is used as a transport protocol for NETCONF, various kinds of development tools are available. By making full use of these tools, developers can significantly reduce their workload. The authors developed an NMS (Network Management System) and network equipment that can deal with NETCONF messages sent over SOAP. This document aims to provide NETCONF development guidelines gained from the experience of implementing a SOAP-based NETCONF client and server. NEW: This document describes how the authors developed a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)-based NETCONF client and server. It describes an alternative SOAP binding for NETCONF which does not interoperate with an RFC4743 conformant implementation making use of cookies on top of the persistent transport connections of HTTP. When SOAP is used as a transport protocol for NETCONF, various kinds of development tools are available. By making full use of these tools, developers can significantly reduce their workload. The authors developed an NMS (Network Management System) and network equipment that can deal with NETCONF messages sent over SOAP. This document aims to provide NETCONF development guidelines gained from the experience of implementing a SOAP-based NETCONF client and server. 2. Add to Section 1.2 the following paragraph: This document describes an alternative SOAP binding for NETCONF which does not interoperate with an RFC4743 conformant implementation as it relies on cookies used on top of the persistent transport connections of HTTP. This is provided for information purposes only based on the implementation experience of the authors. 3. In Section 3.1.2 OLD: In [RFC4743], HTTP is specified as an option of an underlying protocol for NETCONF over SOAP. When HTTP is used for that purpose, it is also specified that a NETCONF session will be supported by an HTTP connection. However HTTP is a stateless protocol; that is, HTTP cannot process a user's request according to the state resulting from the user's previous request. Unless the state is kept at the HTTP- level, a different NETCONF service provider will be invoked every time the NETCONF application sends a NETCONF message to the NETCONF service provider. To ensure that the same NETCONF service provider is used every time the NETCONF application sends a NETCONF message, the state of the HTTP connection must be maintained. Accordingly, a cookie field inside an HTTP header was devised for maintaining the state of an HTTP connection. We therefore used such a cookie field to maintain the state of the HTTP connection over which the NETCONF- session maintenance is ensured. NEW: In [RFC4743], HTTP is specified as an option of an underlying protocol for NETCONF over SOAP. When HTTP is used for that purpose, it is also specified that a NETCONF session state is tied to the state of the underlying transport (TCP) connection (just like in NETCONF over SSH [RFC4742] and NETCONF over BEEP [RFC4744]). However, HTTP itself is a stateless protocol, and many server implementations process user requests independently of previous requests received over the same transport connection. To simplify implementation of the NETCONF service provider, we used the cookie field inside the HTTP header to map incoming requests to NETCONF sessions. Note that this means our implementation actually uses an alternative SOAP binding for NETCONF which does not interoperate with RFC4743 compliant implementations. IESG Note This document discusses implementation experience of NETCONF over SOAP. Note that RFC 4741 section 2.4 states, "A NETCONF implementation MUST support the SSH transport protocol mapping". Therefore, a NETCONF implementation that only supports the SOAP transport described in this document and not (at least) also SSH is not in compliance with the NETCONF standards. _______________________________________________ IETF-Announce@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
