CCNP Automation Practice Question
Which TWO statements about NETCONF and YANG are true?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse YANG's role in defining data models with NETCONF's role in defining transport and RPC operations, leading candidates to incorrectly select Option B, while also mistaking NETCONF's mandatory SSH transport for TLS.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
YANG is a data modeling language used to define the structure of configuration and state data
YANG (RFC 7950) is a data modeling language specifically designed to define the structure of configuration and state data, as well as notifications and RPCs, for network devices. It provides a hierarchical, schema-based representation of data that can be serialized into XML or JSON, making it the standard for modeling NETCONF and RESTCONF datastores.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
NETCONF sessions are stateless
Why it's wrong here
NETCONF sessions are not stateless; they are stateful. A NETCONF session is a persistent communication channel, typically carried over SSH, that maintains a session ID, a hello message with capabilities, and a lock state on datastores. This statefulness is essential because operations like edit-config on the candidate datastore and confirmed-commit rely on the server remembering the session's changes and context across multiple RPC exchanges.
- ✗
YANG defines both the data model and the RPC operations for network devices
Why it's wrong here
While YANG can define custom RPCs (via the 'rpc' statement) within a module, it is fundamentally a data modeling language, not a protocol definition language. NETCONF's core operations such as get, edit-config, and lock are defined in RFC 6241, not by YANG. YANG models the structure of configuration and state data, and any RPC definitions are additional device-specific extensions rather than a replacement for the standard NETCONF operations.
- ✗
NETCONF uses TLS as the mandatory transport protocol
Why it's wrong here
NETCONF's mandatory transport protocol is SSH, as specified in RFC 6242, not TLS. TLS is an optional transport that can be used per RFC 7589, but it is not mandatory. Therefore, the statement 'NETCONF uses TLS as the mandatory transport protocol' is incorrect because it confuses an optional security layer with the default, required transport mechanism.
- ✓
YANG is a data modeling language used to define the structure of configuration and state data
Why this is correct
YANG is a data modeling language used to define the hierarchical structure of configuration and state data in a device. It describes nodes, types, and constraints, allowing controllers and applications to understand the data that NETCONF retrieves and modifies. This is the core purpose of YANG, separate from transport or encoding details, and it is correct because YANG models the data, not the protocol messages.
- ✓
NETCONF uses XML as the data encoding format
Why this is correct
NETCONF encodes all protocol operations and data in XML (Extensible Markup Language), as defined in RFC 6241. The <rpc>, <rpc-reply>, and data payloads are all expressed in XML, making it the native encoding format for NETCONF. This is correct because XML is the default and mandatory encoding, even though some implementations may support alternative encodings like JSON, which is a separate evolution.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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