Open standards have driven the networking industry to the point it has reached today. Standards targeting feeds-n-speeds have dominated standards development efforts for the physical layer, while standards development efforts targeting protocols, such as Data Center Bridging, have enabled Ethernet for the emerging data center market. Nonetheless, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been garnering significant industry attention. But standardization for SDN is needed, in the same way that the physical layer and protocol efforts have benefitted from it. Industry standards, such as those developed by Open Networking Forum (ONF) and Object Management Group (OMG), in combination with open source movements may potentially impact the implementation of physical networking. This panel will explore what needs to be standardized from an SDN perspective, and the potential impact on the physical networking standards. Further, it will explore the very process of standardization for software defined networking.