What happens if the connection between the controller and packet forwarder is lost? Would the switch revert back to inserting its own hardware entries without the help from the controller software?

I have no experience with Openflow. I have some experience with PBB-TE and MPLS provisioning systems and this is always my first question. What happens when these controllers are down from the perspective of the switch? Distributing the controller is better but even that might become unreachable.

The concept is great and I hope this gains more traction. But I'm going to remain doubtful until I see more demos with people pulling links and more real world implementations.

Disclaimer: My day job is as a Test Engineer for a switch manufacturer. So I just see flaws in things.