Yep, and SDN is also possible if you get switches that support things like being an openvswitch-slave or OpenFlow/NetFlow/whateverflow switch. You basically rep

Yep, and SDN is also possible if you get switches that support things like being an openvswitch-slave or OpenFlow/NetFlow/whateverflow switch. You basically replace the control plane. That's why a lot of engineering is based around getting data planes working, and ignoring most of the control plane that runs on the application processor. Even if you only get that to control the ASICs and run a simple REST server to accept data plane control commands it's already enough to turn a switch into something useful forever.