The OpenDaylight (ODL) project is an open source project founded in 2013 to promote software-defined networking and NFV. The software is written in Java. OpenDaylight supports technology such as OpenFlow, is modular in nature, and tries to enable network services across environments. In the middle of the OpenDaylight architecture is a service abstraction layer with standardized southbound API and protocol plugins, which allows operation with hardware devices such as OpenFlow and various vendor-centric:
Also shown in the preceding diagram is the northbound OpenDaylight API. This is normally a REST-based or NetConfig-based API by way of plugins. In the next section, let's take a look at the ODL project components and the project's programming approach.
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