Juniper Networks, Inc.

Gregory Kotlyar

Satish Raghunath

Sankar Ramamoorthi

Satyadeva Konduru

Ramakanth Gunuganti

Sivakumar Venkatesan

An example network device includes a network interface and a control unit that receives a packet having header information. The control unit includes a forwarding structure having a plurality of entries that each refers to one of a plurality of logical interfaces, a forwarding engine configured to access the forwarding structure to select a first logical interface to which to forward the packet based on the header information, wherein the first logical interface comprises a pseudo-device interface (PDI). The control unit also includes a PDI module that tunnels the packet to an external service complex (ESC) by at least applying a set of metadata to the packet, encapsulating the packet with a header, and forwarding the packet to the ESC via the network interface, and wherein the metadata allows the ESC to determine a set of services to be applied to the packet based on the metadata.

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Gregory Kotlyar