Patent ID: 9356864
Filing Date: 2016-05-31
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A packet transfer apparatus to be coupled to at least one input line and at least one output line to receive a packet and transfer the packet to another apparatus, the packet transfer apparatus comprising: a packet reception part for receiving the packet; a packet transmission part for transmitting the packet from the at least one output line; a packet generation part for generating an own-apparatus-originated packet serving as a packet for instructing a predetermined operation and outputting the own-apparatus-originated packet to the packet reception part; a packet search part for determining a content of flow control for the received packet and searching for an output circuit through which the received packet is to be output; a search memory for storing the content of the flow control and information for identifying the output circuit through which the packet is to be output; and a packet transfer processing part for executing switching processing for the received packet, wherein: the packet reception part is configured to: determine whether the received packet is the own-apparatus-originated packet; and output a self-origination flag indicating a result of the determining and header information of the received packet to the packet search part; and the packet search part determines the content of the flow control for the received packet by referring to the search memory based on the self-origination flag and the header information.