robin,
i am not ignoring you. i did not want to write unless i had something
possibly useful to say; and that requires pretending to think, always
difficult.
> I would also like to propose following draft for your reference which
> trigger us to move forward for better network maintenance with
> multiple tools in which gRPC/NETCOF and NMP/BMP may play different
> roles: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-song-ntf/
[ warning: my memory is likely fuzzy, and the glass is dark ]
at an ietf in the late '90s[0], there was a hastily called meeting of
the snmp standards bearers and a bunch of operators. the snmp folk were
shocked to learn that no operators used snmp for other than monitoring;
no one had snmp write enabled on devices; ops configured with the
cli[1]. from this was born netconf and the xml path. credit where due:
phil eng was already well down this path at the time of that meeting.
but netconf/xml was a mechanism and lacked a model. snmp had models,
whether we thought they were pretty or not. thus yang was born, and ,
of course, a new generation wants to use the latest modern toys such as
restconf, openconfig, json, ...
draft-song-ntf yearns for an "architectural framework for network
telemetry," a lofty and worthwhile goal not, a priori, a bad one. but a
few comments from a jaded old dog.
for a new paradigm to gain traction, it must be *significantly* better
than the old one, or the old paradigm must be clearly failing. in the
story above, snmp was clearly failing, aside from using an unfashionable
encoding. and yang clearly provided something needed and missing from
netconf. note that this paradigm shift has taken over 20 years; and we
dis the itu et alia.
second, draft-song-ntf is an export-only model. while telemetry is
extremely important, i will be very frustrated if i can only hear and
may not speak. and the more it evolves to a really attractive paradigm
and model, the more annoyed i will be that i can not use it for control.
and lastly, to quote don knuth, "premature optimization is the root of
all evil." do not get distracted by squeezing bits out of an encoding.
focus on things such as simple, clear, securable, extensible ...
randy
---
0 - i would love help pinning down which meeting
1 - i still have the "it's the cli, stupid" tee shirt. an american
political slogan of the era was "it's the economy, stupid."
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