roup to standardize network configuration to fix the disparity in current configuration techniques, each having its own specifi- cations for session establishment and data exchange. NETCONF protocol, as the name suggests, mainly deals with network configuration and provides the specifica- tions for configuration functions like installing, querying of information, editing, and deleting the configuration of network devices. NETCONF also offers trouble shooting functionality by viewing network information as faults and taking correc- tive action in the configuration. NETCONF is an XML-based protocol. Since it carries configuration informa- tion NETCONF inherently supports a secure infrastructure for communication. The NETCONF requests and responses are always sent over a persistent, secure, authenticated transport protocol like SSH. The use of encryption guarantees that the requests and responses are confidential and tamper-proof. Another security feature in NETCONF is the capability of network elements to track the client identities and enforce permissions associated with identities. Hence security is mostly implemented in the underlying transport layer and even the iden- tities are managed by SSH and then reported to the NETCONF agent to enforce the permissions imposed by the node. Two important concepts associated with NETCONF are its commands and datastores. Commands: NETCONF provides a "Base" set of commands to perform net- work configuration. This basic set can be extended using "Capabilities." The main purpose of capability is to augment the base operations with new com- mands. These new commands can have a unique set of parameters, values, and entities that need not be limited by the base operations. Datastores: The device statistics and configuration data associated with a device and required to get the device from its initial state to a desired operational state is termed as datastores of the device. NETCONF com- mands operate on the data stores that constitute different versions of a device state. The <ru