NETCONF (Network Configuration Protocol)

(references taken from rfc 6241)

As per RFC 6241 — “ NETCONF Provides mechanism to install, manipulate and delete configuration of network devices. It uses XML based data encoding for configuration data as well as protocol messages. The NETCONF protocol operations are realized as remote procedure calls (RPCs).”

NETCONF protocol layers

NETCONF is connection oriented. A client sends series of one or more RPC requests, which causes the server to respond with rpc reply.

There are 2 ways of establishing NETCONF sessions:

1. Normal : client initiates the connection towards server
2. Call Home : NETCONF server initiates connection towards NETCONF client

Datastores

1. Running : mandatory
2. Startup
3. Candidate
4. Operational : running datastore (if backend updates any value, then that value will be shown and not running datastore) + ro 

Data Model access

1. Xpath based
2. Subtree filtering

NETCONF Operations

Following is the list of some common NETCONF operations:

1. get : No datastore specified. gets RW (running datastore) + RO (operational datastore)
2. get-config : gets data from the specified datastore.
3. get-data : similar to get-config, supports operational datastore also.
4. edit-config : 
5. lock : lock a datastore