Patent ID: 7068656

Claim:
A routing apparatus provided with a plurality of ports, for routing a packet received from each of the ports to another port, comprising: a plurality of routing units connected to at least one port, for mutually transmitting a packet received from the at least one port; a transmission unit for connecting the respective routing units to each other and transmitting the packet; and at least one function unit connected to the transmission unit, which receives the packet from the transmission unit, executes a predetermined processing for the packet, and transmits the packet to the transmission unit; wherein the routing unit comprises: a reception unit for receiving the packet from the at least one port; a first lookup unit which uses header information contained in the packet to judge whether the packet should be transmitted to the function unit, and adds an identifier containing first route information corresponding to the function unit to the packet in a case where the packet should be transmitted to the function unit; and a first relay unit for transmitting the packet added with the identifier to the transmission unit; wherein the function unit comprises: a second relay unit for receiving the packet from the transmission unit in accordance with the first route information contained in the identifier; at least one execution unit for executing the predetermined processing for the packet; and a second lookup unit which receives the packet from the at least one execution unit and uses the header information to store second route information corresponding to a destination routing unit into the identifier; and wherein the second relay unit transmits the packet to the transmission unit.