A proxy in a service-based telecommunication network, such as a fifth generation (5G) network, can receive a request a from a consumer network function (NF) and route the request to a producer NF. The request can be addressed to the proxy at an Internet Protocol (IP) layer, but include a path header, such as a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Two (HTTP/2) path pseudo-header field, that indicates a type of producer NF and a type of service. The proxy can select a particular instance of that type of producer NF based on the path header and can forward the request to an IP address of the selected producer NF that corresponds to the type of service indicated in the path header.