The Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) is an IETF standard, which was first published in 2006 as RFC 4741 and later revised in RFC 6241. Juniper networks contributed heavily to both of the RFC standards. In fact, Juniper was the sole author for RFC 4741. It makes sense that Juniper devices fully support NETCONF, and it serves as the underlying layer for most of its automation tools and frameworks. Some of the main characteristics of NETCONF include the following:

1. It uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) for data encoding.
2. It uses Remote Procedure Calls (RPC), therefore in the case of HTTP(s) as the transport, the URL endpoint is identical while the operation intended is specified in the body of the request.
3. It is conceptually based on layers from top to bottom. The layers include the content, operations, messages, and transport:

Juniper networks provide an extensive NETCONF XML management protocol developer guide (https://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos13.2/information-products/pathway-pages/netconf-guide/netconf.html#overview) in its technical library. Let's take a look at its usage.