What is Software Defined Networking (SDN)?

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an approach to network management that enables dynamic, programmatically efficient network configuration in order to improve network performance and monitoring. It decouples the data plane (which forwards traffic) from the control plane (which makes decisions about how to forward traffic), centralizing network control. This allows network administrators to have programmable central control of network traffic without requiring physical access to the network's hardware devices. SDN is commonly used in data centers, cloud computing, and enterprise networks to improve agility, scalability, and efficiency.