Patent ID: 8773999

Claim:
A service appliance comprising: a plurality of fabric ports on an appliance distributed line card (A-DLC), each fabric port being connected to a different scaled-out fabric coupler (SFC) box located externally to the service appliance; a network processor on the A-DLC having a fabric interface in communication with the fabric ports, the fabric interface receiving a different cell of a packet having a cell header over each fabric port from a different SFC box, each cell corresponding to a different portion of the packet received over a network, the network processor reassembling the packet from the cells; and a processor complex on the A-DLC connected to the network processor by a service port to receive the reassembled packet therefrom and to perform an upper layer service on the packet, the upper service providing a function performed at an abstract layer corresponding to Layer 4 or higher of an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Open System Interconnection (OSI) model.