In this paper, the authors give an overview on how Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles can be applied to existing Ethernet merchant silicon considering the requirements modern networks face. They show that existing layer 2 features specified by IEEE 802.1Q support SDN. The bridge architecture supports control plane/data plane split by design and also allows for external control e.g. by an SDN Controller. The data plane provided by existing chips is feature rich for network virtualization and supports even more features like OAM (Operations Administration and Maintenance).