NETCONF - IETF 125 Meeting Minutes

Summary

The NETCONF Working Group met at IETF 125 to discuss the progress of several chartered and non-chartered documents. Significant progress was reported on List Pagination, which is now moving toward publication. The group also discussed the transition of NETCONF over QUIC and its associated YANG groupings to Working Group Last Call (WLCG). Other key topics included CBOR encoding for HTTPS notifications, parity between NETCONF and RESTCONF for Transaction IDs, and a new proposal for IANA registries for protocol errors.

Key Discussion Points

1. Chair Slides

Presenter: Kent Watsen Slides: 0. Chair Slides

Administrative: Kent Watsen (Chair) and Per Andersson (Chair/Secretary) led the meeting.
Accomplishments: RFC 9900 (Port Numbers) has been published. Several other documents are in the RFC Editor queue or under IESG evaluation.
Participation: The chairs encouraged more active participation in draft reviews and volunteering for shepherd roles.

2. List Pagination for YANG-driven Protocols

Presenter: Qin Wu Slides: 1. List Pagination for YANG-driven Protocols Drafts:

draft-ietf-netconf-list-pagination
draft-ietf-netconf-list-pagination-nc
draft-ietf-netconf-list-pagination-rc
Updates: Addressed OpsDir and YANG Doctor reviews. Key changes include clarifying the mutual exclusivity of offset and cursor parameters and moving protocol-specific mapping text into the respective NETCONF/RESTCONF drafts.
Discussion: Per Andersson and Olaf Hagsand confirmed existing implementation experience.
Status: The authors believe all comments are addressed. Kent Watsen noted these will be forwarded to the AD for publication.

3. NETCONF over QUIC

Presenter: David Dai Slides: 2. NETCONF over QUIC Draft: draft-ietf-netconf-over-quic

Updates: Version 04 switched to Port 443 (using ALPN for identification) to improve flexibility and traversability. Version 05 refined authentication text for machine-to-machine vs. end-user scenarios.
Discussion: Kent Watsen (contributor) noted that ALPN is critical to distinguish NETCONF from HTTP/3 on port 443.
Status: Ready for Working Group Last Call.

4. YANG Groupings for QUIC Clients and Servers

Presenter: Per Andersson Slides: 3. YANG Groupings for QUIC clients and QUIC servers Draft: draft-ietf-netconf-quic-client-server

Updates: Clarified handling of QUIC transport parameter updates. The draft uses Enums for IANA registries (matching standard practice) and leverages existing TLS/UDP client-server groupings.
Discussion: Qin Wu questioned the use of enums vs. identities; Per clarified that the working group previously decided on enums for IANA-maintained modules.
Status: Ready for Working Group Last Call.

5. CBOR Encoding for HTTPS-based YANG Notifications Transport

Presenter: Barajwa Slides: 4. CBOR Encoding for HTTPS-based YANG Notifications Transport Draft: draft-ietf-netconf-https-notif-cbor

Technical Content: Discussed efficiency gains of CBOR in bandwidth-constrained networks. Implementation progress was made during the IETF 125 Hackathon, including a PR for CBOR support in libyang.
Discussion on Media Types: Alex and Barajwa discussed whether to use application/cbor or application/yang-data+cbor. Alex argued for yang-data+cbor as it more accurately reflects the YANG-encoded payload.
Decision: Since this requires updating the base HTTPS-Notif draft (already past WGLC), Kent Watsen and Mahesh Jethanandani suggested pulling that draft back briefly to align the media types.

6. Transaction ID Mechanism for RESTCONF

Presenter: Per Andersson Slides: 7. Transaction ID Mechanism for RESTCONF Draft: draft-ietf-netconf-transaction-id (context of RESTCONF extensions)

Technical Content: Aiming for parity with the NETCONF transaction ID mechanism. Proposed using ETag headers and payload attributes for RESTCONF.
Discussion on Structure: Kent Watsen (contributor) and Lou Berger (via chat) suggested the document structure should be cleaner: either one combined document or a three-document set (Base + NETCONF map + RESTCONF map).
Technical Feedback: Kent Watsen noted that the current RESTCONF proposal lacked the granularity of the NETCONF version (rejecting the whole request instead of specific nodes). Per Andersson agreed this needs refinement.

7. NETCONF Error List and Error Identities Registries

Presenter: Per Andersson Slides: 8. NETCONF Error List and Error Identities Registries Draft: (New proposal)

Problem: NETCONF errors are currently scattered across multiple RFCs, making implementation and discovery difficult.
Solution: Create IANA registries and IANA-maintained YANG modules for error lists and identities.
Discussion: Kent Watsen suggested making these generic "Protocol Errors" rather than NETCONF-specific, as RESTCONF and CORECONF use them. James and Per Andersson spoke against removing error codes, noting their utility in debugging.
Status: Authors will seek working group adoption.

8. Initial YANG-next Impact on NETCONF 2.0

Presenter: Kent Watsen Slides: 9. Initial YANG-next Impact on NETCONF 2.0

Context: Discussion on how the evolution of YANG (YANG-next) might affect protocol-specific error handling and versioning. The goal is for YANG-next to be minimally non-backwards compatible while addressing long-standing issues like semantic versioning.

Decisions and Action Items

List Pagination: Forward draft-ietf-netconf-list-pagination (and its -nc/-rc extensions) to the AD for publication.
QUIC Transports: Initiate Working Group Last Call for draft-ietf-netconf-over-quic and draft-ietf-netconf-quic-client-server.
HTTPS Notif CBOR: Chairs to coordinate with Med Boucadair to pull back the base HTTPS notification draft to update media types for CBOR alignment.
Transaction ID: Authors to discuss restructuring the Transaction ID work into a three-document set (Base, NETCONF, RESTCONF) to ensure protocol parity and better maintenance.

Next Steps

Authors of the Transaction ID work will report back on the proposed document split.
The Error Registry proposal will be socialized on the mailing list for potential adoption.
Monitoring of libyang progress regarding CBOR integration for future testing.

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