This whitepaper describes how NETCONF and YANG can help drastically simplify network configuration management. The IETF has recently standardized the NETCONF configuration management protocol and is currently in the process of standardizing a NETCONF-oriented data modeling language called YANG. These two new technologies promise to drastically simplify network configuration management.

This paper shows how NETCONF and YANG can be employed to make next-generation configuration management systems considerably simpler, more understandable, and also more robust than current systems.