NETCONF Interoperability Testing (original) (raw)

Performance Improvement Methods for NETCONF-Based Configuration Management

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

IETF's NETCONF WG has taken efforts in standardizing configuration management protocol, which allows high interoperability of configuration management. In addition to interoperability, high performance is also required in configuration management, but many researches have often discarded the performance aspect of it. In order to fill that void, this paper proposes methods to improve performance with layers of NETCONF. It demonstrates and compares the performance evaluations to verify the efficiency of the proposed methods. This evaluation can be used as a guideline to effectively implement NETCONF. Moreover, it also demonstrates the process of performance evaluation of configuration management.

Automating Network and Service Configuration Using NETCONF and YANG

Network providers are challenged by new requirements for fast and error-free service turn-up. Existing approaches to configuration management such as CLI scripting, device-specific adapters, and entrenched commercial tools are an impediment to meeting these new requirements. Up until recently, there has been no standard way of configuring network devices other then SNMP and SNMP is not optimal for configuration management. The IETF has released NETCONF and YANG which are standards focusing on Configuration management. We have validated that NETCONF and YANG greatly simplify the configuration management of devices and services and still provide good performance. Our performance tests are run in a cloud managing 2000 devices. Our work can help existing vendors and service providers to validate a standardized way to build configuration management solutions.

NCClient: A Python Library for NETCONF Client Applications

IP Operations and Management, 2009

The NETCONF protocol provides sound mechanisms for configuring network devices. While support for the protocol has been implemented by several network device vendors, there is a lack of supporting tools and libraries for NETCONF client applications. This paper presents NCClient, an open source Python library providing features and facilities for scripting and application development. The architecture, design and interoperability testing of the library is described and some examples of its usage are provided.

A Lazy Evaluation Strategy for Assessing Network Device Configuration Correctness

Network development frequently affects the management of its devices, the bandwidth and the workload of network administrators who have to configure these devices. But the establishment by the IETF network protocols such as Netconf and YANG allowed the development of network configuration management to replace SNMP who had proven flawed. Thus the third aspect already found its solutions in the development of management tools for configurations, involving the first aspect at the same time. Remains the second aspect that few existing tools take into account, because the change of one parameter will transfer the entire configuration file. Therefore, our present paper proposes a method for recovering a part of a configuration file for editing. To do this, we use high-level programming concepts to abstract the manufacturer of the equipment. We used also concepts such as logical formulas and Meta-CLI to represent the abstract configuration of the device then we can test certain complex properties of one or more devices and deduce the rest of information. These logical formulas are in the form of a tree containing device parameters retrieved from the device itself. Thus our algorithm needs only to retrieve the parameter necessary for the computing of the logical formula.

On automating network systems configuration management

CRJ

In nowadays, communications are expanding in very high rates. New technologies are being born and some of them are taking so much importance in people’s lives. In a situation where people’s needs are getting more complicated and everybody’s lifestyle is advancing to another level, bigger and better infrastructure is needed. Managing all this process can’t be anymore a step by step process. It is strictly needed to evolve in automated process. Network configuration and reconfiguration may be a repetitive process, time consuming, and error prone process. To address this problem this paper is going to shed light on the benefits of an automated configuration and topology verification process. To this end, a proof of concept system, Netmiko, has been used in a case study. Netmiko scripts are able to read the current network state, can apply predefined configurations loaded from text-files or csv files, and automatically verify the network state. The goals of this paper are to demonstrate...

A Formal Validation Model for the Netconf Protocol

Utility Computing, 2004

Netconf is a protocol proposed by the IETF that defines a set of operations for network configuration. One of the main issues of Netconf is to define operations such as validate and commit, which currently lack a clear description and an information model. We propose in this paper a model for validation based on XML schema trees. By using an existing logical formalism called TQL, we express important dependencies between parameters that appear in those information models, and automatically check these dependencies on sample XML trees in reasonable time. We illustrate our claim by showing different rules and an example of validation on a Virtual Private Network.

Testing and verification of network management and design tools

Bell Labs Technical Journal, 2003

Testing large-scale software applications has been an area of activity for a long time. Today several fields like design patterns advocate very good practices that aim to ease the burden of testing. However, in practice, testing is often done in an ad hoc manner. Large-scale software systems like network management systems are tested against very specific system requirements, which tend to be inadequate. Such large-scale systems, comprising concurrent multi-threaded processes interacting with each other, often need to be tested for long periods of time (sometimes longer than the time taken to develop the system) before they are suitable for deployment on a live network. Despite such stringent system requirements, testing often takes a back seat, and sophisticated software tools, though available, are very rarely employed in system testing. Here we describe an engineering approach for testing and verification of network management and design tools. We describe a set of handy principles, algorithms, and testing architectures that have worked very well in practice and have achieved remarkable results. The paper derives heavily from our experience; we have developed several products for Lucent Technologies' Optical Networks organization over the last three years.

Simplifying network testing: techniques and approaches towards automating and simplifying the testing process

2009

The dramatic increase of companies and consumers that heavily depend on networks mandates the creation of reliable network devices. Such reliability can be achieved by testing both the conformance of individual protocols of an implementation to their corresponding specifications and the interaction between different protocols. With the increase of computer power and the advances in network testing research, one would expect that efficient approaches for testing network implementations would be available. However, such approaches are not available due to reasons like the complexity of network protocols, the need for different protocols to interoperate, the limited information on implementation because of proprietary codes, and the potentially unbounded size of the network to be tested. To address these issues, a novel technique is proposed that improves the quality of the test while reducing the time and effort network testing requires. The proposed approach achieves these goals, by ...

Automating Network System Configurations for Vendor-Specific Network Elements

2017

In present day, telecommunications stakeholders have not yet fully automated hardware configurations. Network configuration and reconfiguration is a repetitive, time consuming, and error prone process. To address this problem this bachelor thesis is going to shed light on the benefits of an automated configuration and topology verification process. To this end, a proof of concept system, Enna, has been developed in a case study together with an ISP stakeholder. Enna reads the current network state, applies predetermined configurations loaded from text-files, and automatically verifies the network state. The goals of this thesis are as follows: development of Enna to illustrate the simplicity in the implementation, compare the automated network reconfiguration to a fully manual one, and finally discuss potential benefits or problems in switching to an automated network configuration. Since this thesis is carried out in collaboration with an ISP working with Cisco IOS XR devices, Enna...