[secdir] Asynchronous Nature of the I2RS Protocol - vs RESTCONF and NETCONF

["Susan Hares" <[e-mail]>]

I2RS WG: 

 

We are trying to wrap of the protocol requirements for I2RS within March.
This post ask 3 questions regarding the I2RS requirements.  

 

Question 1 context:  

The I2RS architecture states in section 1.1 that the I2RS interface should
be: programmatic, asynchronous, and offers fast, interactive access for
atomic operations.  This posts asks if we need to require a checkpoint to
make asynchronous functions work. 

 

In a review by the security directorate, the reviewer asked:  "Is security
and the support for the asynchronous nature of the protocol fully
supported?"  In the reviewers mind Asynchronous usually means the following:

 

1)      The protocol can launch operations and then check back later whether
they successfully completed.

2)       If you want to execute a second operation only if a first succeeds
(or to guarantee the order in which they execute), you need to at some point
wait for operations to complete.

3)      There is also substantial overhead in supporting asynchronous
operation in that all transactions need labels so that they can be queried?

 

Question 1:  Do we believe that netconf or restconf augmented by the
traceability requirements and the pub/sub requirements provides this
support?  

Question 2: Do we need a checkpoint (monotonically incrementing counter to
accomplish #2)? 

 

 

Question 3 Context:

The security directorate reviewer of the I2RS architecture stated: 

" A conceptually simpler strategy [than the asynchronous strategy] is to say
that since a client can make multiple parallel connections to an agent that
in cases where a client wants asynchronous operation he opens multiple
connections and launches one asynchronous operation on each. The cost is
that is has lower performance in cases where there are large numbers of
parallel operations tying up lots of connection state." 

 

In my understanding RESTCONF provides one operations per session. 

 

Question 3: If the I2RS client requires a tradeoff where that restricts the
space requirements for parallel sessions, is the space requirement for
output only (so that pub/sub requirements) are sufficient.  Or should this
tradeoff be considered in the I2RS protocol requirements. 

 

Thank you for your help,

 

Sue Hares