A method for managing a chain of service appliances. A method for interoperating with a legacy service appliance which does not understand/interpret the service chain header format. The method specifies a proxy device which receives a data packet with chain header that contains a chain ID. The chain ID identifies a particular service chain of network services to be performed on the data packet by a plurality of service appliances. The method removes a chain header from the data packet. The method sends the data packet to the service appliance via a logical port that corresponds to the data packet's chain ID. The method includes receiving the data packet back from the service appliance via the logical port. Lastly, the method includes restoring the chain header in the data packet based upon the logical port through which the data packet is received.