SDN is a network paradigm that helps businesses manage network resource use and govern network administrative processes. Network control is maintained by utilizing open APIs to help in maintaining it. SDN decouples network configuration and traffic engineering from their underlying hardware architecture by divorcing them from one other.

• SDN, a software-based design, contrasts with conventional networking, almost always a hardware-based design. With SDN, it is easier to customize the control plane, which results in greater flexibility and simplicity for users.
• SDN controllers communicate with APIs through an interface that runs in the north direction. Network programmers, given this linkage, may write applications that speak directly to the network instead of using networking protocols.
• The SDN platform gives network administrators the capability to specify new network devices’ configurations using software rather than physical infrastructure, allowing them to govern the network’s paths and plan network services. Conventional switches enable better connectivity with networked devices because of SDN.
• Conventional networking is fundamentally different from SDN because of virtualization. The networking equivalent of SDN is the abstraction of the underlying physical network into an abstract model that allows resource provisioning to be managed from a centralized place.
• Conventional networks also have their drawbacks. One of them is that the physical placement of the control plane (the center of the network) restricts an IT administrator’s ability to monitor traffic flow.