Service processing switch

A method for delivering network-based Internet Protocol (IP) services to a plurality of customers of a service provider, the method comprising:

• monitoring a load associated with a plurality of virtual routing processing resources of an IP service generator of a virtual router (VR) based switch, each of the plurality of virtual routing processing resources representing an application-tailored engine configured to perform packet classification and deep packet inspection;
• load balancing received packets, by a flow manager of a line interface/network module of the IP service generator, among the plurality of virtual routing processing resources by directing received packets to a selected virtual routing processing resource of the plurality of virtual routing processing resources, the received packets representing service requests from the plurality of customers;
• maintaining by the plurality of virtual routing processing resources a packet flow cache by setting up packet flow entries associated with each established packet flow, each packet flow entry of the packet flow cache containing information indicative of one or more packet processing actions or packet field manipulations to perform on packets associated with the established packet flow;
• determining, by the selected virtual routing processing resource, whether a received packet is associated with an established packet flow within the packet flow cache by performing deep packet classification;
• when an affirmative determination is made, directing, by the selected virtual routing processing resource, the received packet to a virtual services processing resource of a plurality of virtual services processing resources of the IP service generator, each of the plurality of virtual services processing resources representing an application-tailored engine configured to provide network-based IP services including one or more of virtual private network (VPN) processing, firewall processing, Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filtering and anti-virus processing;
• and
• if the received packet is not dropped or otherwise blocked as a result of the network-based IP services performed by the virtual services processing resource, the virtual services processing resource returning the received packet to the selected virtual routing processing resource for forwarding.