RFC 9890

An Update to YANG Module Names Registration

📅 published October 2025, from ietf

Rewriting RFC 9890: An Update to YANG Module Names Registration 💖

okay bestie, so this is the title block 🎀 It's an Internet Standards Track document, published October 2025. 🌸 It's by A. Bierman (YumaWorks), M. Boucadair, Ed. (Orange), and Q. Wu (Huawei). It updates RFC 6020 ✨ and doesn't obsolete anything. The ISSN is 2070-1721 and it's listed as Request for Comments: 9890. 💅

Abstract ✨

okay so this doc is all about tightening up the IANA rules for who gets which name in the YANG module registry 🦋 It's giving "clarify the vibes" energy. 💜

This document amends the IANA guidance on the uniqueness of YANG module and submodule names. 💅

It updates RFC 6020 so we're clear on how modules and their revisions get handled by IANA. 🫶

Status of This Memo 🌈

This is an Internet Standards Track document. 🔥

It's a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and it represents the consensus of the IETF community 👑 It went through public review and got approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). ✨ If you want more on Internet Standards, check Section 2 of RFC 7841. 🧚

Info about the current status, any errata, and how to give feedback lives at https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9890. 🌸

Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. 🎀

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) as they stand on the publication date. 📜 Please read these carefully, bestie, because they spell out your rights and restrictions. 🙈 Code Components pulled out of this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License. 💀

Table of Contents 🍓

1.  Introduction
2.  Requirements Notation
3.  IANA Considerations
  3.1.  Update YANG Parameters Registry
  3.2.  Revisions of Published Modules
4.  Operational Considerations
5.  Security Considerations
6.  References
  6.1.  Normative References
  6.2.  Informative References
Acknowledgments
Authors' Addresses

1. Introduction 🦋

okay so [RFC6020] sets up a registry for YANG module and submodule names, called "YANG Module Names" [IANA-MOD-NAMES]. 🌷

The IANA rules for registering those names live in Section 14 of [RFC6020]. 📋 Those rules say every module and submodule name in the registry MUST be unique. 😭 The thing is, IANA's actual practice doesn't quite match that guidance. 🙈

So this document amends the uniqueness guidance (Section 14 of [RFC6020]) to line up with how IANA really registers modules and their revisions. 💅✨

2. Requirements Notation 👑

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be read as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, just like here. 🫶

3. IANA Considerations 🌈

3.1. Update YANG Parameters Registry 🧚

IANA has updated the "YANG Module Names" registry under the "YANG Parameters" registry group [IANA-MOD-NAMES] so it lists this document as an additional reference. ✨ That's needed because the procedure in this document is the authoritative one for assigning names in that registry. 👑

3.2. Revisions of Published Modules 🦋

This document amends the uniqueness guidance, first defined in Section 14 of [RFC6020], like so: 💜

OLD:

|  All module and submodule names in the registry MUST be unique.
|
|  All XML namespaces in the registry MUST be unique.

NEW:

|  Modules and their revisions are maintained in the registry.
|
|  All initial version module and submodule names in the registry
|  MUST be unique.
|
|  All XML namespaces of initial version modules in the registry MUST
|  be unique.
|
|  All module and submodule revisions MUST have the same name as the
|  one in the initial version of the module and submodule.
|
|  All module revisions MUST have the same XML namespace as the
|  initial version of the module.

4. Operational Considerations 🎀

This document lines up an IANA policy with the practice for handling YANG module names (Section 3.2). 🌸 So no new operations or manageability requirements come out of it. 💅

5. Security Considerations 💀

This document defines a new IANA action (Section 3.1) and updates an IANA registration procedure from [RFC6020] (Section 3.2). 🔥 It doesn't introduce any new or increased security risks that need to be discussed. 🫶

6. References 📚

6.1. Normative References 🌟

[RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
           Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
           DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
           <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

[RFC6020]  Bjorklund, M., Ed., "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for
           the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC 6020,
           DOI 10.17487/RFC6020, October 2010,
           <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6020>.

[RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
           2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
           May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

6.2. Informative References 🧁

[IANA-MOD-NAMES]
           IANA, "YANG Module Names",
           <https://www.iana.org/assignments/yang-parameters/>.

[YANG-GUIDE]
           Bierman, A., Boucadair, M., Ed., and Q. Wu, "Guidelines
           for Authors and Reviewers of Documents Containing YANG
           Data Models", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
           ietf-netmod-rfc8407bis-28, 5 June 2025,
           <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-netmod-
           rfc8407bis-28>.

Acknowledgments 🫶

The content of this document was part of [YANG-GUIDE]. 🌈

Mahesh Jethanandani suggested offloading this part from [YANG-GUIDE], and thanks to Mahesh and Kent Watsen for the discussion and comments. 💜

Thanks to Mallory Knodel for the GENART review and Barry Leiba for the ARTART review. ✨

Thanks to Mike Bishop for the IESG review. 👑

Authors' Addresses 🧚

Andy Bierman
YumaWorks
United States of America
Email: andy@yumaworks.com

Mohamed Boucadair (editor)
Orange
France
Email: mohamed.boucadair@orange.com

Qin Wu
Huawei
China
Email: bill.wu@huawei.com

That's the whole RFC, bestie! 🦋💖 It's giving tidy registry housekeeping, and the main takeaway is that every module and submodule's initial version has to be unique, while revisions stick with their original name and namespace. 💅✨

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