US Patent 11368387 Using router as service node through logical service plane

Some embodiments facilitate the provision of a service reachable at a virtual internet protocol (VIP) address. The VIP address is used by clients to access a set of service nodes in the logical network. Facilitating the provision of the service, in some embodiments, includes returning a serviced data message to a load balancer that selected a service node to provide the service for the load balancer to track the state of the connection using the service logical forwarding element. To use the service logical forwarding element, some embodiments configure an egress datapath of the service nodes to intercept the serviced data message before being forwarded to a logical forwarding element in the datapath from the client to the service node, and determine if the serviced data message requires routing by the routing service provided as a service by the edge forwarding element.