What is Software-Defined Networks (SDNs)?

Understanding Software-Defined Networks (SDNs)

Separates network systems into three components: raw data, how the data is sent, and what purpose the data serves. This involves a focus on data, control, and application management functions or planes. Software-defined networking is an architecture that separates the network's control plane (decision-making logic) from the data plane (packet forwarding infrastructure), centralizing network intelligence and abstracting the underlying network hardware. This provides programmability, automation, and centralized management of network resources. SDN architectures are defined in standards like ONF OpenFlow and various vendor implementations. Organizations implement SDN through controllers, programmable switches, virtualization, automation tools, and APIs for network management. For example, a large enterprise data center might implement SDN to centralize network management across thousands of devices, dynamically allocate bandwidth based on application needs, automate security policy enforcement, and rapidly provision network services, all controlled through a central management console rather than device-by-device configuration. Related terms: Network virtualization, Control plane, Data plane, Network programmability, OpenFlow, Network automation, Network function virtualization, Network orchestration.