Data Plane

In Software Defined Networking (SDN), the Data Plane (also known as the forwarding plane) is responsible for the actual movement of data packets through the network. It handles tasks like packet forwarding, filtering, and inspection, ensuring that data flows between devices based on predefined rules set by the control plane. The data plane operates on network devices like switches and routers, and it executes the policies and rules defined by the control plane without making its own decisions. In SDN, the control plane is decoupled from the data plane, meaning the control plane manages and instructs the data plane on how to handle traffic, but the data plane performs the real-time operations of forwarding and processing the packets.

Setting up the Data Plane

1. Log on to the VM that is created to host the data plane (e.g. AS1_DP)
2. Set up mininet and network monitoring tools (such as Wireshark, tcpdump, npcap) using this script