|  packets going  |        ^  packets coming   ^
   v down the stack  v        |   up the stack    |
+-----------------------+   +-----------------------+
|        Source         |   |      Destination      |
+-----------------------+   +-----------------------+
|   Service sub-layer:  |   |   Service sub-layer:  |
|   Packet sequencing   |   | Duplicate elimination |
|    Flow replication   |   |      Flow merging     |
|    Packet encoding    |   |    Packet decoding    |
+-----------------------+   +-----------------------+
| Forwarding sub-layer: |   | Forwarding sub-layer: |
|  Resource allocation  |   |  Resource allocation  |
|    Explicit routes    |   |    Explicit routes    |
+-----------------------+   +-----------------------+
|     Lower layers      |   |     Lower layers      |
+-----------------------+   +-----------------------+
            v                           ^
             \_________________________/