The text explains the concept of planes in networking, specifically the control plane and data plane. The control plane is responsible for managing routing and signaling functions, while the data plane handles the actual movement of data packets through the network. These two planes work together to ensure efficient and reliable network performance by dividing responsibilities: the control plane makes strategic decisions about routing and policies, while the data plane executes these decisions by forwarding packets at high speed. The text also discusses various use cases for each plane, including network management and configuration, dynamic routing, policy enforcement, security, packet forwarding, traffic filtering and security enforcement, quality of service (QoS), load balancing, and software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV).