Patent ID: 8289967

Claim:
A packet forwarding method, comprising: receiving a packet from a switch board; acquiring an input port number of the packet, looking up a forwarding policy table to acquire an output port number and a cascade port number corresponding to the input port number; forwarding the packet to a cascade board via a port corresponding to the cascade port number; and forwarding the packet to a port corresponding to the output port number; wherein the forwarding policy table comprises a â€œpacket input port bitmapâ€, a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) broadcast enabled/disabled, and a â€œpacket output port bitmapâ€, the â€œpacket input port bitmapâ€ stores the input port number, and the â€œpacket output port bitmapâ€ stores the output port number and the cascade port number corresponding to the input port number; wherein the looking up the forwarding policy table to acquire the output port number and the cascade port number corresponding to the input port number comprises: looking up the â€œpacket input port bitmapâ€ according to the input port number to acquire a control identifier of the input port number; and looking up the corresponding â€œpacket output port bitmapâ€, if the control identifier of the input port number is True and the corresponding â€œVLAN broadcast enabled/disabledâ€ is False, and acquiring the corresponding output port number and the corresponding cascade port number.