Building NETCONF-enabled network management systems with libnetconf

NETCONF is proposed as a new standard protocol for configuration and management of network devices. NETCONF provides standardized way to configure heterogeneous networks. Currently, one of the obstacles to its widespread adoption is a lack of programming tools allowing developers to easily add NETCONF protocol support into the configuration tools and network devices. libnetconf library provides such functionality. This paper presents possibilities of using libnetconf for a development of network management applications and network device controllers supporting NETCONF protocol. We describe NETCONF functions provided by libnetconf as well as guidelines for utilizing libnetconf library to develop network management applications.