Patent ID: 8611361

Claim:
A switching hub, comprising: a plurality of line cards, each line card comprises a plurality of ports comprising receiving ports for receiving a frame from outside and transmitting ports for transmitting the frame to outside, at least a subset of the plurality of ports provided on the plurality of line cards composing a link aggregation group (LAG), each line card further comprises; a receiving unit for receiving the frame from outside and a transmitting unit for transmitting the frame to outside, the receiving unit comprises: a distributed identifier (ID) calculation portion for calculating a distributed ID based on the frame received by one of the receiving ports of the plurality of ports and adding the distributed ID to the frame; and a distribution table identification information adding portion for adding first table identification information for identifying a first distribution table or second table identification information for identifying a second distribution table to the frame, the transmitting unit comprises: the first distribution table that stores a port identifier (ID) for identifying a transmitting port for transmitting the frame associated with the distributed ID to outside; the second distribution table that stores the port ID associated with the distributed ID so that a correspondence relation is different from that of the first distribution table, the first and second distribution tables storing port IDs of the ports composing the LAG so as to be associated with the distributed ID; a transmission distribution table access portion for obtaining the port ID stored in the first or second distribution table so as to be associated with the distributed ID that is added to the frame by referring to the first distribution table when the first table identification information is added to the frame and by referring to the second distribution table when the second table identification information is added to the frame, the transmission distribution table access portion referring to the first or second distribution table in a case that the frame is relayed by flooding, the receiving unit further comprises: a FDB (Forwarding Database) for storing a MAC (Media Access Control) address and the port ID or a LAG ID for identifying the LAG as registered data; a FDB access circuit having a function of searching a destination in the FDB; a LAG distribution table for distributing the LAG ID, the distributed ID and the port ID so as to be associated with each other; and a reception distribution table access portion for obtaining the port ID stored so as to be associated with the LAG ID detected by the FDB access circuit and with the distributed ID added in the frame by referring to the LAG distribution table.