CODEWITHSUNDEEP
snmpietf-netmod-yangietf-netconf
Meisathish kumar
Meisathish kumar

Reputation: 19

Can Netconf protocol be used for monitoring the device data?

I have been using the SNMP to read the object id's for monitoring the network devices. I have come across a protocol called "NetConf" which is used for network configuration. Netconf also provides some API's to read the network device data. Can I be able to achieve the monitoring of OID's which is done using the SNMP with the NETCONF? Instead of keeping multiple data models one model(YANG)for configuration and the other for monitoring(Mib module)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1365

Answers (3)

Bhuvan
Bhuvan

Reputation: 429

Can Netconf protocol be used for monitoring the device data?

Answer: Yes, provided the device has Yang based data model. In fact, Netconf is efficient for monitoring as it separates config data from State data. Also, you can define a Netconf RPC operation to fetch complete Statistic data as a file in one go, which is more efficient than fetching OID by OID as done in SNMP.

In order to understand why Netconf is far better than SNMP, read RFC3535 and https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-edu-netconf-yang-00.pdf

Can I use the yang model for querying data in SNMP. So that I can keep only the Yang model which can be used for querying both the SNMP as well as NETCONF supported device.

Answer: Data model is NOT used to query the data. It is used to represent/model and store the data in the device. Protocols such as Netconf and SNMP provide various operations to query the data. Netconf supports Yang data model. SNMP supports SMI data model.

Can I be able to achieve the monitoring of OID's which is done using the SNMP with the NETCONF?

Answer: OIDs are part of SMI data model. No, Netconf cannot monitor SMI-based data models.

Upvotes: 1

predi
predi

Reputation: 5928

There is a standard conversion of SNMP MIBs to YANG modules, documented as RFC6643, Translation of Structure of Management Information Version 2 (SMIv2) MIB Modules to YANG Modules. The other way around is not possible, however.

Resulting YANG modules will use specialized extensions that expose OID information to an implementation that consumes a YANG module. These extensions may also freely be used in any module, even those you write on your own, if you import the module that is part of the mentioned RFC.

Finding an implementation that supports the extensions is the hard part as Andrew writes in his answer. I'm not aware of any such implementation.

I suggest you search for client/server implementations that explicitly say they support RFC6643.

Upvotes: 0

Andrew Komiagin
Andrew Komiagin

Reputation: 6556

  1. Theoretically, YES. But, Netconf is rather new though and not many people use it, whereas SNMP is a well established protocol to gather information about network devices, bandwidth, resource usage.

  2. There are plenty of SNMP free tools out there that can display nice graphs, and a lot of commercial tools/NMS too.

  3. There are few Netconf tools though and they are not as easy to work with as SNMP.

  4. Also SNMP is widely supported by most HW/SW vendors and Netconf has very limited support.

Upvotes: 1

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