



Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                        A. Bierman
Request for Comments: 9890                                     YumaWorks
Updates: 6020                                          M. Boucadair, Ed.
Category: Standards Track                                         Orange
ISSN: 2070-1721                                                    Q. Wu
                                                                  Huawei
                                                            October 2025


              An Update to YANG Module Names Registration

Abstract

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

   The document updates RFC 6020 to clarify how modules and their
   revisions are handled by IANA.

Status of This Memo

   This is an Internet Standards Track document.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
   Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9890.

Copyright Notice

   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) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the
   Trust Legal Provisions and are provided 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

   [RFC6020] defines a registry for YANG module and submodule names,
   called "YANG Module Names" [IANA-MOD-NAMES].

   Specifically, IANA considerations to register YANG module and
   submodule names are specified in Section 14 of [RFC6020].  These
   considerations require that all module and submodule names in the
   registry must be unique.  However, the practice followed by IANA is
   not consistent with that guidance.

   This document amends the guidance on the uniqueness of names
   (Section 14 of [RFC6020]) to comply with the IANA practices for
   registering 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 interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown 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] to list this document as
   an additional reference.  This update is needed because the procedure
   in this document is authoritative for assigning names in that
   registry.

3.2.  Revisions of Published Modules

   This document amends the guidance on the uniqueness of names,
   initially defined in Section 14 of [RFC6020], as follows:

   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 aligns an IANA policy with the practice for handling
   YANG module names (Section 3.2).  As such, there are no new
   operations or manageability requirements introduced by this document.

5.  Security Considerations

   This document defines a new IANA action (Section 3.1) and an update
   (Section 3.2) to an IANA registration procedure defined in [RFC6020].
   It does not 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 to offload this part from [YANG-GUIDE].
   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 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
