Stateless control planes

The techniques disclosed herein improve existing systems by receiving, by a packet processor from a control node of the communications network, a request to program operations for processing data packets, the request received with opaque data comprising a state of the control node. The packet processor stores the operations and the opaque data in a data store of the packet processor. The packet processor receives from the control node a subsequent request to retrieve the opaque data. The packet processor sends to the control node the operations and the opaque data that were stored in the data store of the packet processor. The opaque data is not stored in the control node.