US Patent 10491520 Container-based software appliance

A packet is received at a first component of a system including a plurality of components, where one or more of the plurality of components are each hosted on a respective one of a plurality of software containers. The packet is processed to determine context information for the packet and a first destination for the packet is determined based on the context information, where the first destination includes a second one of the plurality of components, and the second component is hosted on a first one of the plurality of software containers. A routing table is appended to the packet and a record of the routing table is populated to indicate routing to the second component. The packet is sent with the routing table to the second component.