Some embodiments provide a method of performing control plane operations in a radio access network (RAN). The method deploys several machines on a host computer. On each machine, the method deploys a control plane application to perform a control plane operation. The method also configures on each machine a RAN intelligent controller (RIC) SDK to serve as an interface between the control plane application on the same machine and a set of one or more elements of the RAN. In some embodiments, the RIC SDK on each machine includes a set of network connectivity processes that establish network connections to the set of RAN elements for the control plane application. These RIC SDK processes allow the control plane application on their machine to forego having the set of network connectivity processes. In some embodiments, the set of network connectivity processes of each RIC SDK of each machine establishes and maintains network connections between the machine and the set of RAN elements used by the control plane application of the machine, and handles data packet transport to and from the set of RAN elements for the control plane application.