Patent ID: 7408935

Claim:
A packet forwarding apparatus provided with a plurality of line interface units each connected to an input line and an output line, comprising: a routing processing unit for referring to a routing table, based on header information of each of packets received from the input line interface units, and specifying one of said output lines from which the packet should be output; a common table for storing a plurality of entries therein; a list table for storing therein pointer addresses for accessing the entries lying within said common table, said list table being divided into a plurality of sub-list tables corresponding to the values of a specific flow attribute; a flow detection unit for retrieving, by referring to the common table, packet transfer control information defined by one of said entries of which the flow condition is satisfied with parameter values extracted from header information of the received packet; and a packet forwarding unit for transferring said received packet to one of said line interface units connected to the output line specified by said routing processing unit; wherein said flow detection unit refers to one of said sub-list tables specified by the value of the specific flow attribute associated with each of said received packets to retrieve an entry having a flow condition satisfied with the header information of the received packet, based on pointer addresses stored in the specified sub-list table; and said packet forwarding unit controls the transfer of each of said received packets to one of said line interface units in accordance with the packet transfer control information notified from said flow detection unit.