Model Context Protocol (MCP) Extensions for Network Equipment Management

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Network controllers today need to speak CLI, YANG/NETCONF, SNMP, gNMI, and vendor-private APIs. Implementing a separate adapter for each protocol is expensive and error-prone.¶

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) already defines a JSON-RPC 2.0 based framing, capability negotiation, and extensible tool/resource model. By adding a small set of network-specific capability flags and tool names, a device can expose its CLI, YANG datastores, and event streams through the same MCP channel that AI applications use for retrieving context.¶

This document specifies those extensions. All new elements live in their own capability namespace and can be ignored by generic MCP clients, preserving backward compatibility.¶

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.¶

2. Terminology

MCP Model Context Protocol¶

Server MCP server running on the network device¶

Client MCP client running on the controller¶

Datastore Conventional YANG datastore (running, candidate, operational)¶

3. Capability Advertisement

Servers that implement this specification MUST include the following object inside serverCapabilities in the initialize response:¶

"network": {
  "yangModules": ["ietf-interfaces", "openconfig-interfaces"],
  "cliDialect": "cisco-iosxr",
  "configDatastore": ["running", "candidate", "operational"],
  "notificationStream": ["syslog", "netconf-stream", "snmp-trap"],
  "maxBulkEdit": 1000,
  "supportsRollback": true,
  "rollbackTimeout": 300
}

4. Tools

Seven new tool names are defined. All reuse the standard MCP tools/call request and MUST be listed by tools/list.¶

Arguments are described by JSON Schema inside tool metadata, so SDKs can auto-generate bindings. If a device only supports CLI, it advertises network.yang.* tools with available=false; controllers automatically downgrade.¶

5. Resources

Network state is exposed as read-only resources with URI scheme network:///. Examples:¶

network:///interface/TenGigE0/0/0/0
network:///routing/ipv4/route-table
network:///file/startup-config

MIME type MUST match the encoding (application/yang-data+json, text/plain, etc.). Large data can be paginated using the native MCP resource/subscribe cursor mechanism.¶

6. Prompts

Interactive assistants MAY expose prompt templates such as¶

network.troubleshoot.ping-fail, network.config.add-vlan, network.security.audit.¶

Arguments are implementation specific but SHOULD use the same JSON Schema style as tools for consistency.¶

7. Error Codes

New JSON-RPC error codes (registered in IANA section):¶

These codes allow controllers to distinguish transport failures from authorization or device-level errors without parsing free-text messages.¶

8. Security Considerations

All operations run with the privileges of the authenticated MCP session. Servers MUST enforce role-based access control for configuration commands. Commit confirmed SHOULD be used for potentially disruptive changes. Transport security is provided by the underlying MCP transport (TLS for HTTP, SSH port-forward for stdio). Sensitive data (passwords, SNMP communities) MUST be redacted in logs and MCP traces.¶

9. IANA Considerations

Appendix A. Appendix A. JSON Schema Examples

Example tool metadata snippet (pretty printed):¶

{
  "name": "network.yang.get",
  "description": "Retrieve a YANG data node",
  "inputSchema": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "path": { "type": "string" },
      "datastore": { "enum": ["running", "operational"] }
    },
    "required": ["path"]
  }
}

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