Campus networks have evolved over the years with more complexity in technology and management introduced in them to support the growing user base. The initial architecture of campus networks was characterized by the finite number of nodes that were application-centric, such as firewalls and load balancers. Growth in the campus required a very complex network architecture, which could comprise hundreds of nodes.

In earlier campus network deployments based on traditional networks architectures, there existed a rigid foundation that required support for mobility, security, multiple devices, and variants of application packets. SDN comprises the best approach to tackle the ever-evolving networks present in campuses. For instance, campus networks require many policies considering the diversity of users present. SDN deployed with OpenFlow allows the provision of these policies across the network from the centralized controller.

SDN deployed on campus networks allows packet-level wide-visibility of traffic traversing through the network nodes per time. Network analytics grants the network administration access to analytics and thorough visibility of the network. In proactive network management, network administrators, upon reviewing analytics results, can deploy policies to maximize bandwidth allocation using the load balancer app existing in the north plane of the controller.