The SD-WAN architecture is composed of separate orchestration, management, control, and data planes. Which activity happens at the orchestration plane?

The orchestration plane is responsible for the zero-touch provisioning and automatic onboarding of SD-WAN routers into the SD-WAN overlay fabric. It authenticates devices, distributes certificates, and bootstraps connectivity so that new devices can join the network without manual intervention. This separates onboarding logic from ongoing policy and forwarding concerns.

Traffic flow decision-making is the responsibility of the control plane, not the orchestration plane - the control plane computes routes and distributes policy to routers.

Central configuration and monitoring belong to the management plane, which provides the administrative interface for ongoing operations.

Packet forwarding is the function of the data plane, which moves traffic between endpoints based on decisions made by the control plane.