Control Plane Vs Data Plane

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_plane (opens in a new tab)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_plane (opens in a new tab)

Data plane

Part of software that processes data request.

E.g. in Unix, open/close files.

Control plane

Part of software that configures and shutdown data plane.

E.g. in Unix, read/write files.

Why

The separation allows:

• data plane is optimized for speed of processing, and for simplicity and regularity.
• control plane is optimized so as to allow configuration, handling policies, handling exceptional situations, and in general facilitating and simplifying the data plane processing