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IETF Last Call comments on draft-ietf-netconf-soap-06.txt

NetConf WG, and specifically author(s) of the SOAP document,

please review and comment.

Bert
-----Original Message-----
From: iesg-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:iesg-bounces@ietf.org]On Behalf Of Mark Baker
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 21:37
To: iesg@ietf.org
Subject: NETCONF over SOAP and BCP 56


I'd like to take issue with a claim made in the NETCONF over SOAP draft;

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-netconf-soap-06.txt

In section 2.4 regarding BCP 56, the draft says;

"Fundamentally, these concerns lie directly with SOAP over HTTP, rather than the application of SOAP over HTTP to NETCONF."

That is incorrect.  The advice of BCP 56 is relevant to any use of HTTP.  For example, BCP 56 provides guidance about the use of port numbers, security, and URI schemes, none of which SOAP (1.1 or 1.2) take any position on.  Moreover, the SOAP specifications don't require that HTTP be used as a tunnel; they fully support the use of SOAP as an extension to the HTTP processing model.

IMHO, either the draft needs to defend its disregard of many of the recommendations of BCP 56, or it needs to accomodate them as best it can.  I expect this will be particularly difficult given that NETCONF is itself an application protocol, but at the very least I think the draft should recommend or require that port 80 not be used, or that a new HTTP method be used (viz a viz BCP 56 section 6), so as to separate NETCONF traffic from Web traffic.

Thanks,

P.S. http://xml.coverpages.org/draft-presuhn-nmwebdav-01.txt describes (at a very high level) a network configuration protocol that doesn't tunnel over HTTP, but instead uses HTTP/WebDAV as an application protocol.  The use of SOAP is not described though, but you could imagine all of the configuration documents wrapped in a SOAP envelope.  Such a use of HTTP for network configuration would probably comply with BCP 56.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.          http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies   http://www.coactus.com

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