NETCONF Data Model And NETCONF/SNMP Gateway

SNMP has some deficiencies in the area of configuration management, such as poor representability of data model, low efficiency of configuration operation and difficulty in realization of complex configuration operation. To complement the weaknesses of SNMP, XML-based technology on configuration management is being put on the research agenda. IETF issued the formal definition of NETCONF as the standard of XML-based network configuration management in December 2006. With the development of the NETCONF protocol, the NETCONF data model and the NETCONF/SNMP Gateway has been the research hotspot.Currently the NETCONF protocol does not establish a standard data model. Therefore, a new data model that suitable for NETCONF the protocol is urgent to develop. Firstly, this paper researched the NETCONF data model. The paper analysed the design principle of data model, and compared of XSD and YANG which are the existing data model of the NETCONF data modeling language. According to the fundament of research and analysis, this paper designeda new NETCONF data model DM-YANG. There are some advantages in DM-YANG, such as readability, powerful representability, security, extendability, compatibility. On the base of the data model, we design and implement an NETCONF agent generator, which enable the developer to increase the management information items of NETCONF agent, therefore the development of NETCONF agent was simplified.At the same time, there must be NETCONF/SNMP Gateway between NETCONF-based manager and SNMP agent to be compatible with the large number of already existing SNMP agents.In this paper, a NETCONF/ SNMP gateway is designed and implemented. In the design, we use the DOM-based transform method for protocol operation and data interation translation between agents and managers. In the gateway, we use the DM-YANG to describe the data model, and the basic conversion rule for SNMP MIB transform from SMI to DM-YANG is presented. In the realization, we use XML, SNMP++, SSL, and other related technologies. We can realize NETCONG management towards devices supporting SNMP and ensure the security of the communications between the manager and the gateway.