Patent ID: 6976256

Claim:
A pipeline processing type shaping apparatus that calculates a transmission scheduling time for each input packet to said apparatus by performing pipeline processing by a pipeline processing portion which includes a plurality of processing blocks, said apparatus comprising: a management memory that stores the most recent scheduling time allocated to a packet, which has been processed by said pipeline processing portion, for each of packet flow identifiers; a storage portion that includes a plurality of internal registers, which are equal to the number of processing blocks in said pipeline processing portion, and each stores a number of packets and a total sum length of packets having the same packet flow identifier and currently being processed in said pipeline processing portion; and a calculating part that calculates the transmission scheduling time of an input packet, being processed by said pipeline processing portion, in accordance with the most recent scheduling time being managed by said management memory and packet length for which said input packet length and said total sum length of packets stored in said internal register corresponding to the same packet flow identifier as said input packet are added.