**2. Software-defined networking architecture**

Software-defined networking (SDN), a network architecture, provides an environment that enables the network traffic and connectivity provided by a set of network resources that are centrally controlled or programmed by software applications. It manages the data traffic forwarding or processing functions, such as QoS, filtering, monitoring, or tapping. Except the traditional network architecture, the SDN architecture logically decouples data and control plane which helps to control the network centrally from the control plane. This helps to improve the scalability of SDN architecture. **Figure 1** illustrates the working principles of SDN. SDN architecture comprises three basic components: Data Plane, Control Plane, Application Plane.
