Service Groups and Service Object support

In a traditional networking system, the term “service” refers to a type of connection between two endpoints that is visible as it passes through the networking system. The “service” can be a layer 4 protocol number combined with source and destination ports, all of which are visible from the L4 payload and by deep packet inspection, can be based on an application ID and L7 fields such as URL strings. An extension is being proposed in this blueprint that allows the network administrators to create service objects. The customized service objects can then be grouped together to form a service group.The service object and service group abstractions proposed in this blueprint will be first consumed by the FWaaS implementation, but its applicability is not limited to FWaaS and can be leveraged in other features where such service definition and grouping is required.