RESTCONF

REST-based APIs, which are positioned by many vendors as a way to provide interoperability, in fact is just a first step towards it.

REST is a generic term that could be applied to almost any web service. RESTful web service allows “to access and manipulate textual representations of web resources using a uniform and predefined set of stateless operations”[1].  As vendors use different textual representations to describe same services’ commands[2], the REST APIs are different.

RESTCONF applies generic REST architecture to APIs of NETwork CONFiguration (management) systems. YANG models used to represent the services: the API calls follow the structure of the YANG models. In other words, RESTCONF is “an HTTP-based protocol that provides a programmatic interface for accessing data defined in YANG, using the datastore concepts defined in NETCONF”[3].

RESTCONF with vendor-neutral YANG models should be used as a main northbound API for any SDN controller or network management system responsible for transport network devices’ configuration.  If RESTCONF interface is not available, a migration plan towards RESTCONF should be developed with the vendor or a replacement should be considered.