Netconf Operation Steps, SDN (Software Defined Network) Protocols

Table of Contents

NETCONF Operations

NETCONF Operation has three common steps. These steps are:

• Session Establishment
• Operation Request and Reply
• Session Close

Firstly, the Session is Established with the

<hello> messages. Both NETCONF Client and NETCONF Server send <hello> message with their capabilities, what operations they support.

After Session Establishment, Operation Request and Reply messages are sent. These messages are for specific operations. Here, the messages used for Operation Request is send with

<rpc> messages and the Operation Replies is sent with <rpc-reply> messages. NETCONF Client sends its requests to the NETCONF Server with <rpc> message. And Server replies with message.

Lastly, session is closed with message. Client sends this message and the server replies back with

<ok> message.

NETCONF Messages

We have talk about NETCONF Operation Steps and we saw the messages that are sent between NETCONF Client and NETCONF Server. Now, let’s check a little deeply and see the content of these messages.

First of all, let’s start with Hello messages. As you know, Hello messages establishes NETCONF session. These messages includes the capabilities of the sending device.


<hello xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0">
 <capabilities>
   <capability>
     urn:ietf:params:netconf:base:1.1
   </capability>
   <capability>
     https://ipcisco.com/folder1/xyz
   </capability>
 </capabilities>
 <session-id>1</session-id>
</hello>

Now, let’s check Operational RPC Messages.There are two RPC Messages used in NETCONF. All these operations are done within these main messages. These RPC Messages are: