Aspects of the present invention provide an approach for improving communications between a software-defined networking (SDN) controller and a hardware gateway in a SDN. In an embodiment, a SDN proxy gateway is installed. The SDN proxy gateway communicates with the SDN controller on behalf of the hardware gateway. To accomplish this, the SDN proxy gateway processes a communication sent from the SDN controller to the hardware gateway. This communication includes a request from a computing node to establish a network communication channel. The SDN proxy gateway translates these instructions (e.g., the logical network and endpoint information), which are in the native format of the SDN controller, into a standardized hardware gateway protocol. The translated information that the hardware gateway can use to establish the network connection is then pushed to the hardware gateway by the proxy gateway.