Patent ID: 7586916

Claim:
A packet routing apparatus, connected to a plurality of ports, for transmitting a packet received from one of the ports to the other port, comprising: at least one routing module for routing the packet received from one of the ports to the other port; at least one extended function module for receiving the packet transmitted from one of the routing modules, performing an arbitrary additional function processing, and transmitting the packet to which the arbitrary additional function processing was performed to one of the routing modules; and a bus for mutually connecting the respective routing module and the extended function module respectively; wherein the routing module comprises: an adding portion for adding an identifier to a head portion of the received packet, a first lookup unit for looking up and acquiring first transmission route information corresponding to a port of a transmission destination by using address information contained in the received packet, and storing the first transmission route information into the identifier, and a bus transceiver for transmitting the packet added with the identifier to the bus, and receiving the packet from the bus, wherein the routing module transmits the packet to which the identifier was added to the extended function module, and wherein the extended function module transmits the packet to one of the routing modules according to information contained in the identifier, when the extended function module receives the packet to which the identification was added.