Patent ID: 7760632

Claim:
A network relay device for relaying packets, comprising: a plurality of interface units, each of the interface units including one or more physical ports for connection to a line, and a bandwidth controller configured to control transmission bandwidth for packets received by the physical ports, wherein the physical ports of the plurality of interface units are classified into a plurality of output port groups each including one or more physical ports, each output port group being associated with output port group information, wherein an output port group forms a virtual LAN architecture that divides a network including the plurality of physical ports into virtual partial networks; a destination processor configured to, based on destination information associated with a received packet, select from among the physical ports, a single output physical port for transmission of the received packet; and a bandwidth control setting module configured to set a control value of bandwidth control used by the bandwidth controller, the control value being set individually for at least one of the plurality of output port groups; wherein the network relay device is configured to form one or more distributed-control logical ports each including plural physical ports which are distributed across two or more of the interface units, plural physical ports of a single distributed-control logical port being aggregated as a single virtual logical port by a link aggregation function of the network relay device, plural physical ports of a single distributed-control logical port being included in a single output port group for which the control value has been set, and wherein the destination processor executes: (i) a first process of selecting the distributed-control logical port for transmission of the received packet based on the destination information, (ii) a second process of selecting a same single specific physical port as the output physical port from among the physical ports included in the distributed-control logical port based on the output port group information unique to the output port group including the distributed-control logical port.