Patent ID: 7990884

Claim:
A service facility in an inter-networking environment for applying service applications to inbound data intercepted on a communications path and for retaining session data including access control identifier (ACI) metadata across said service facility for forwarding on said communications path, comprising: a communications channel manager having facilities for reading header data including said ACI metadata received with said inbound data on each of various layers of a communications stack within said communications path and for writing header data to be forwarded on the communications path on the various layers of said communications stack; an ACI policy manager coupled to a memory, the ACI policy manager including a processor programmed to provide rules to be applied to the ACIs, said ACI policy manager including an ACI reader for transferring the ACI metadata from said communications channel manager to said ACI policy manager, and further including an ACI writer for transferring the ACI metadata from said ACI policy manager to said communications channel manager and to the memory, said communications channel manager configured to write the ACI metadata received from said ACI writer to a same layer or a different layer of said communications stack on which the ACI metadata was received; and a service manager for controlling a plurality of service applications to be performed on said inbound data including said ACI metadata received from the ACI policy manager.