In the context of Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which layer is responsible for managing policies and the flow of traffic throughout the network, and how does it communicate with other layers? The application layer; it communicates directly with the infrastructure layer through APIs The infrastructure layer; it communicates with management planes using direct routing protocols The control layer; it uses northbound interfaces to communicate with applications and southbound interfaces to communicate with switches The management plane; it communicates with both application and infrastructure layers using standardized protocols