MG-SOFT NetConf Browser Professional Edition is a powerful and user-friendly NETCONF and RESTCONF client application that lets you retrieve, modify, install and delete the configuration of any NETCONF or RESTCONF server device in the network.

The software can load any set of standard or vendor-specific YANG 1.1 (RFC 7950) and YANG 1 (RFC 6020) modules and display their contents in a visual manner, where module elements are represented in a hierarchical tree structure, containing nodes on which NETCONF or RESTCONF operations can be invoked.

NetConf Browser offers an intuitive user interface that lets you easily retrieve the device configuration and state data as well as modify the device configuration via the NETCONF v1.1 (RFC 6241) or NETCONF v1.0 (RFC 4741) protocol operations (get, get-config, lock, unlock, edit-config, copy-config, delete-config, commit, etc.).

The software supports establishing NETCONF sessions over SSHv2 (RFC 4742 and RFC 6242) and TLS v1.2 (RFC 5539 and RFC 7589) secure transport protocols. NetConf Browser also supports NETCONF Call Home (RFC 8071), where a NETCONF server is the peer that initiates a secure connection to NetConf Browser. The application has a built-in certificate manager tool lets you effortlessly generate and manage X.509 digital certificates used for NETCONF and RESTCONF communication with public key authentication.

In addition, NetConf Browser implements full support for NMDA (RFC 8342). It can automatically discover all NMDA datastores supported by a server that implements YANG Library 1.1 (RFC 8525), download the YANG modules belonging to each datastore, and visualize supported datastores in separate tabs in the YANG Tree panel. NetConf Browser supports NMDA-specific <get-data> and <edit-data> operations, as well as augments to <lock>, <unlock> and <validate> operations, as specified in (RFC 8526).

MG-SOFT NetConf Browser fully supports also the RESTCONF protocol with both, XML and JSON encoding of data (RFC 8040). NetConf Browser lets you use all standard RESTCONF HTTP methods like GET (screen shot) , POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE etc., invoke proprietary operations and actions, and allows receiving server-sent notifications via RESTCONF protocol. The software incorporates YANG-based auto-complete mechanism for composing the RESTCONF URIs, as well as fully fledged auto-completion feature when writing RESTCONF message payloads in XML and JSON format. NetConf Browser supports regular, client-initiated RESTCONF sessions, as well as RESTCONF Call Home sessions. The software supports also RESTCONF extensions for NMDA, as specified in (RFC 8527).

Main features

MG-SOFT NetConf Browser Professional Edition is powerful and user-friendly NETCONF and RESTCONF client application that lets you retrieve, modify, install and delete the configuration of any NETCONF and RESTCONF server device in the network.

The following is a brief list of the main features in MG-SOFT NETCONF Browser Professional Edition.

• Complete support for NETCONF protocol
  NetConf Browser is an application with a modern and intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) that lets you select commands for performing all operations defined by the NETCONF protocol (RFC 6241, RFC 4741). The user interface lets you, for example, select the desired node in the YANG tree and choose the corresponding <get> or <get-config> command from the context menu to easily retrieve the value of the respective leaf, leaf-list, list or container statements or entire subtrees from the selected datastore in the remote NETCONF device. Furthermore, NetConf Browser GUI contains dedicated toolbar buttons, dialog boxes, windows and commands that let you quickly and effectively perform other NETCONF operations, such as <lock>, <unlock>, <edit-config>,<copy-config>, <delete-config>, etc. 
  
  
• Complete support for RESTCONF protocol
  NetConf Browser implements full support for the RESTCONF protocol (RFC 8040) with both, XML and JSON data encoding. The application user interface, data validation procedures and message payload composition feature have all been extended to transparently support also RESTCONF in addition to the NETCONF protocol. NetConf Browser lets you use all standard RESTCONF HTTP methods, like GET (screen shot), POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, etc., invoke proprietary operations and actions, and allows receiving event notifications via RESTCONF. The software incorporates YANG-based auto-complete mechanism for composing the RESTCONF URIs (screen shot), as well as fully fledged auto-completion feature when writing RESTCONF message payloads in XML and JSON format (screen shot). NetConf Browser supports also RESTCONF extensions for NMDA, as specified in RFC 8527, including the NMDA datastore resources ({+restconf}/ds/) and the "with-origin" query parameter for the GET operation.
  
  
• NETCONF version 1.1 and 1.0 over SSH
  The software provides full support for the NETCONF v1.1 over SSH specification (RFC 6241, RFC 6242), as well as for NETCONF v1.0 (RFC 4741, RFC 4742) for backward compatibility reasons. NetConf Browser lets you perform any NETCONF operation against the connected NETCONF server. Even if the operation is not actually available through the application's GUI, it can be issued manually by typing the appropriate XML command and sending it to the NETCONF server.
  
  
• NETCONF over TLS and SSH with public key authentication
  MG-SOFT NetConf Browser supports NETCONF over TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol version 1.2 (RFC 7589, RFC 5539 for backward compatibility) employing the public key authentication mechanism (screen shot). In addition to TLS, NetConf Browser supports the public key authentication also with SSH2 transport protocol (screen shot). The built-in certificate manager tool lets you generate and manage digital certificates used for securing NETCONF over TLS and NETCONF over SSH with key-based authentication sessions, as well as for RESTCONF, which employs HTTP over TLS (HTTPS) secure transport. This easy-to-use tool allows you to generate new public and private key pairs wrapped in X.509 certificates in a wizard-driven fashion, quickly import certificates from external keystore files, generate certificate signing requests, export certificates, manage trusted CA certificates, etc..
  
  
• Support for RESTCONF over HTTPS connections
  The NetConf Browser connecting capabilities have been extended to enable connecting to RESTCONF devices via the HTTP over TLS (HTTPS), using the TLS public key infrastructure (X.509 certificates) for authenticating both server and client. In addition to TLS authentication, the HTTP client authentication is also available featuring the basic and digest authentication scheme (screen shot). Besides the regular, client-initiated RESTCONF connections, RESTCONF Call Home connections that are initiated by servers are also supported. After establishing a RESTCONF session with a server, NetConf Browser automatically discovers the RESTCONF server root resource, server capabilities, data-model- specific RPC operations, event streams, and yang-library data (incl. NMDA datastores and associated modules). The software can automatically download YANG modules from the RESTCONF server and load them so one can immediately start managing the given device.
  
  
• NETCONF Call Home and RESTCONF Call Home
  MG-SOFT NetConf Browser supports NETCONF Call Home over SSH and TLS, as well as RESTCONF Call Home connections over HTTPS (RFC 8071). Call Home is a method where a server is the peer that initiates a secure connection to a NETCONF/RESTCONF client (i.e., NetConf Browser). The Call Home connection method is useful in many scenarios, for example, when server devices are deployed behind a firewall and/or NAT that does not allow management access to the internal network, etc..
  
  
• Device profiles for straightforward management of NETCONF and RESTCONF devices
  The software lets you configure and use profiles for managing different NETCONF and RESTCONF-enabled devices (servers). A device profile contains parameters that describe a particular device, i.e., the device address, description, device data model (e.g., supported YANG modules) and NETCONF/RESTCONF connection type and details, optionally including user credentials (screen shot). This principle lets you configure device settings only once for each device and then re-use these settings by simply switching to the relevant device profile when you wish to manage a particular device. By default, when you switch to a device profile in NetConf Browser, the software automatically connects to the respective device and loads the relevant YANG modules, so you can start quickly managing that device using the data model, datastores, capabilities and features it supports. NetConf Browser can automatically discover the datastores supported by an NMDA device, and download the YANG modules belonging to each datastore - if device supports this (screen shot). A device profile can also be configured to load the data model from the local repository of known modules (for non-NMDA devices).

Requirements

MG-SOFT NetConf Browser is a JavaTM application that can be installed and used on Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems with installed Oracle Java Runtime Environment version 8.0 (a.k.a. JRE 1.8) or newer or with OpenJDK 11 or newer.

The current default version of Oracle Java is Java 8, and the latest general availability release, at the time of this writing, is Java 20. Long-term support (LTS) Java releases are Java 8, 11 and 17