Design And Implementation Of NETCONF-based Network Configuration Management Agent

As the most basic function of network management,configuration management is a veryimportant research topic for the internet.Currently, the main approach to managing devices isCommand Line Interfaces(CLIs),which are vendor-specific and user-oriented,notapplication-oriented.While SNMP works well for monitoring network devices,it is not a goodsolution for configuration management,which is lack of enough automatic configurationoperations and hard to construct complex configuration data models and so on.The absence ofautomation and standardization of current configuration makes it difficult to manage networkefficiently and without errors.To meet the new needs of configuration management，the IETF formed the NETCONFWorking Group and approved a configuration management protocol--NETCONF inDecember2006.NETCONF is a XML-based protocol,it provides mechanisms toinstall,manipulate,and delete the configuration of network devices,which makes theconfiguration more standard,scalable and flexible.NETCONF is considered as the direction ofnetwork configuration management and by the attention and concern of the major equipmentsuppliers and research institutions.This paper firstly summarizes the new requirements of configuration management inRFC3535, and detailed research and analysis NETCONF protocol.And then propose ageneral framework of NETCONF-based network management, which according to theNETCONF protocol structure. Put forward the concept of NETCONF components,NETCONF components down with the same operation configuration data structure, realizethe content layer of the NETCONF protocol. NETCONF components provide a set of Unifiedinterface, shielding the heterogeneity configuration data, form NETCONF componentsabstraction layer, realize the operation layer of NETCONF protocol.finally, tests theNETCONF agent in switches and make an outlook of the following research. Test resultsshow that NETCONF based on the configuration management is of high safety and efficiency.