Patent attributes
A service control entity is configured to control chains of services provided in a service network having a plurality of service providing modules. A data packet flow from a source address to a destination address is transmitted through the service network applying a chain of services. A chain control unit determines possible chains of services to be applied, identifies the predefined sequence of services applied to the data packet flow, and identifies in which order the identified service providing modules have to be passed in order to apply the predefined sequence of services. A module control unit assigns, to each of the service providing modules in the chain of services, an ingress network address of an underlying layer of the end-to-end layer. The module control unit assigns ingress network addresses so that they have a predefined relationship to the ingress network address of a neighboring service providing module.
