Re: [netconf] netconf-tls wasRe: Summary of updates

[Kent Watsen <[e-mail]>]

Hi Juergen,

> RFC 5539 (published in May 2009) defines NETCONF over TLS and it is
> very specific that it requires TLS 1.2 or future versions of TLS:
> 
>   Implementations MUST support TLS 1.2 [RFC5246] and are REQUIRED to
>   support the mandatory-to-implement cipher suite, which is
>   TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA.  This document is assumed to apply to
>   future versions of TLS; in which case, the mandatory-to-implement
>   cipher suite for the implemented version MUST be supported.
> 
> Given this, I do not think we need to consider TLS versions < 1.2
> since there was never a specification for NETCONF over TLS versions <
> 1.2 - a NETCONF over TLS 1.1 implementation is using a non-standard
> transport.


The tls-client-server draft is not exclusive to NETCONF.  For example, RESTCONF and PCE WG has a “peep-yang” draft...

That said, it seems Tom is saying that TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are effectively historic at this point (no longer used) and so support for those versions should be dropped for that reason?


> PS: And as I said before, if any updates to RFC 5539 are necessary to
>    support NETCONF over TLS 1.3 properly, then we should spin RFC
>    5539 and not deal with the definition of a transport mapping in
>    the configuration document.


Adding TLS 1.3 to the tls-client-server draft is not for NETCONF’s sake.  

The netconf-client-server doesn’t yet, but perhaps should, state that the tls-client-server’s draft support for 1.3 should be ignored until RFC 5539 is updated? 


Kent