OpenFlow is a communication protocol that is used for communication between different vendor's equipment for the packet flow. This standard is maintained by a group called Open Network Foundation (ONF). OpenFlow, as the name suggests, is used to control the flow of packets in a network layer through a mix of Access Control Lists (ACLs) and routing protocols.

OpenFlow primarily has two components—controllers and switches. Controllers are used to take decisions in terms of creating a path for the packet to flow across the different connected devices, and switches (or network equipment) are dynamically configured from the controller based upon the path that a packet needs to take.

Going a little more in-depth, OpenFlow controllers control the routing of packets in OpenFlow switch forwarding tables through the modification, addition, or deletion of packet matching rules as decided by the controller.

As OpenFlow is another protocol, it runs over TCP and works on port 6653 on controllers. At the time of writing, OpenFlow standard 1.4 is currently active and being widely used in the SDN framework. OpenFlow is an additional service that proprietary network vendors run alongside their custom software. This, in general, ensures that the data forwarding or data packet handling is still part of proprietary switch, but the data flow or control plane tasks is now taken over by OpenFlow controllers. As part of SDN framework, if a participating switch receives a packet and does not know where to send it, it communicates with the OpenFlow controller for an answer. The controller, based upon its preconfigured logic, decides what action to take for that unknown packet and can get switches that it is controlling to create a separate or a specific path for that packet to flow across the network. Because of this behavior, this is the protocol that is currently being deployed across all deployments where SDN is being introduced.