Patent ID: 7088716

Claim:
A network routing apparatus for determining a routing address of a packet in a network on the basis of header information of said packet and routing said packet to said routing address, comprising: a plurality of packet forwarding units for performing a process of forwarding input packets; a packet distribution unit for distributing input packets supplied from an interface of a router into said packet forwarding units in order or into empty ones of said packet forwarding units which do not now perform processing; and a packet rearrangement unit for performing rearrangement of packets in inputting order of the packets which are subjected to said packet forwarding process by said packet forwarding units; wherein said packet distributing unit determines one of said packet forwarding units for distributing a packet on the basis of a header condition of said packet so that a series of packets to be forwarded from a packet sender address to a forwarding address are not arranged in reverse order of their input order even in a case where said packets are not rearranged by said packet rearrangement unit.