Patent ID: 8730962

Claim:
A packet switch for forwarding packets through input ports and output ports, the packet switch comprising: a buffer memory; a classifier which classifies a packet received through the input ports into one of a plurality of queue groups, in accordance with either at least one of a transport layer protocol and a layer protocol of an Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model higher than the transport layer protocol of the packet, and which classifies the packet into one of a plurality of queues in the queue group; a queuing controller which queues the packets into the buffer memory based on a result of classification of the packet by the classifier; a packet read-out controller, which reads, from the buffer memory, a packet classified into a specific queue group while guaranteeing a first bandwidth assigned to the specific queue group, and which reads a packet classified into another queue group other than the specific queue group using a bandwidth of the first bandwidth that is unused; and a packet sending unit which sends each packet read from the buffer memory to one of the output ports.