Patent ID: 7693985

Claim:
A method for dispatching data packets to a service control engine (SCE) in a plurality of SCEs in a communication network, the method comprising: in an upstream direction of a data flow: receiving a data packet from the communication network; hashing a source address contained in the data packet to identify an SCE in the plurality of SCEs; dispatching the data packet to the correspondingly identified SCE on a first Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) to perform deep packet inspection of the data packet; receiving the data packet from the correspondingly identified SCE on a second VLAN; and forwarding the data packet received from the correspondingly identified SCE to a destination wherein the destination is associated with a destination address contained in the data packet; in a downstream direction of the data flow: receiving a second data packet from the communication network; hashing a destination address contained in the second data packet to identify the SCE in the plurality of SCEs; dispatching the second data packet to the correspondingly identified SCE on the second VLAN to perform deep packet inspection of the second data packet; receiving the second data packet from the correspondingly identified SCE on the first VLAN; and forwarding the second data packet received from the correspondingly identified SCE to a destination associated with the destination address contained in the second data packet; such that packets associated with the same data flow are dispatched to the same SCE.