An approach to network management that creates software versions of network devices
Planes
Diving up each networking device functionality into 3 planes for software implementation.
Infrastructure Layer / Data Plane
Responsible for all processing of frames and packets like:
- Forwarding
- Trunking
- Encryption
- NAT
Control Layer / Control Plane
For the control of these packets like:
- Routing tables
- Session tables
- NAT tables
Application Layer / Management Plane
Ability to access each device:
- SSH
- Browser
- API
- SNMP