is Logical port is an egress-only port which allows OpenFlow applications to access and processes the ports of the element host operating system (OS). Normal: This Logical port is also egress-only ports which allow the switch to function like a conventional Ethernet switch with associated flooding/ learning behaviours. According to protocol functional specification, this port is only supported by a Hybrid switch i.e., which behaves like both OpenFlow switch and Layer 2 switch. Controller: This Reserved port allows the flow rule to forward the packets from the data path to controller and vice versa over the control channels. This also enables the behaviour like PACKET_IN and PACKET_OUT. Flood: This logical port is an egress-only port which uses the replication engine of the network element for sending the packet out with all non-reserved standard ports. FLOOD supports the element packet replication engine which makes it vary from the another reserved port ALL which includes the ingress ports. There are two modes which are offered by the forwarding paradigm namely, proactive (pre-provisioned) and reactive (data-plane driven). In the proactive mode, the driven program locates the forwarding entries before its demand. While in the reactive mode, if flow fails to match the existing entries, the driver has two possibilities i.e., either to drop the flow or to apply PACKET_IN option to make decision to create a flow entry which is capable of accommodating the packets. The control channel is used to configure, supervise and provide the path for packets between the switch and controller/applications. This channel was initially described as a symmetric TCP session which is secured by the Transport Layer Security (TLS). Downloaded: 4/15/2022 9:44:49 AM Nova Southeastern University IP Address: 137.52.76.29 Introduction to OpenFlow Statistics support covers table, port, flow, queue and vendor-specific hardware's. In the case of reliances between the successive messages, OpenFlow supports the BARRIER message to develop a pacin