Comparison between several open source Network Configuration protocol Server implementations
Alexandru Stancu, Alexandru Vulpe, George Dan Suciu, Eduard C. Popovici · 2016
Recent technological advances in the telecommunications industry have led to discovering the limitations of traditional communication networks and, in this context, to the emergence of a new paradigm that tries to mitigate them, namely Software Defined Networking (SDN). When it appeared, it was associated only with the OpenFlow protocol, as a southbound interface. However, the recent trend in the industry is the adoption of NETCONF (Network Configuration) protocol, not for replacing OpenFlow, but rather as a complementary solution. This paper provides a comparison, based on hands-on experimentation, between three NETCONF Server open source implementations: Netopeer, OpenYuma and Netconf Testtool provided by Opendaylight. The objective of the paper is to help the researchers interested in developing or testing SDN applications that use the NETCONF protocol as an interface between the SDN controller and the network elements choose a framework for a NETCONF Server that is suited to their needs.