Patent ID: 8503442

Claim:
A transfer apparatus comprising: a memory configured to store correspondence among a VLAN identifier, a MAC address, a port identifier and an index; a cache memory configured to store both a VLAN member in the index order and priority information corresponding to the VLAN member, an access to the cache memory being faster than an access to the memory; an extraction unit configured to extract a destination MAC address, a source MAC address and a VLAN identifier from an input packet; a search unit configured to search an output port identifier using the extracted VLAN identifier and the extracted destination MAC address from the memory, and an index corresponding to the extracted VLAN identifier and the extracted source MAC address from the memory in parallel; controller configured to search a VLAN member and priority information using the searched index from the cache memory; determination unit to determine an output port identifier from the searched output port identifier and the searched VLAN member; and an output port corresponding to the determined output port identifier and configured to output an output packet based on the searched priority information.