The Control Plane is a part of network that manages how data packets are forwarded from one source to another. It manages the flow control and uses of control logic to make resolution which is responsible for setting rules for the forwarding devices to pinpoint data plane and communication, occurs over the Southbound API.

An SDN control plane encompass a sets of software-based SDN controller to hand over control functionality in order to deal with network forwarding behaviors. SDN control plane compromises of controller and out-of-band/in-band control channels between switches and controllers. The key performance of control plane parameters that includes ,

 •  Flow setup Latency
 •  Controller throughput
 •  Controller availability
 •  Time-varying processing workload of controllers
 •  Time-varying volume of traffic in control channels
 •  High-availability requirements in control planes

Control plane packets are locally originated by the router itself. It acts as a decision maker in data forwarding the data packets. The Control plane is a fully independent entity while the data plane cant able to exist alone.

The programmability of control plane is particularly most important to manage and control the performance, fault tolerance of virtual overlay of an “in-band” control channels which is essentially more efficient than out-of-band control networks. The control plane performs some following feature functions such as ,

 •  Creating routing tables
 •  Managing network traffics
 •  Maintains network Topology
 •  Provides Security and Load Balancing
 •  Performs their task independently
 •  Ensuring around-the-clock service delivery
 •  Using spanning tree protocol, address resolution protocol, routing information protocol and dynamic host configuration protocol.