Patent ID: 8199756

Claim:
An apparatus for forwarding a frame according to a transfer condition, comprising: a transfer-condition storage unit that stores therein a data including a destination data that is likely to be included in the frame, an area data that indicates an area a plurality of destination data are affiliated to and has a hierarchical structure composed of a plurality of layers, and the transfer condition corresponding to the destination data; a deleted-area data storage unit that stores therein a deleted area data as the area data, for a layer, when the area becomes non-existent, wherein the data including the deleted area data is to be deleted from the transfer-condition storage unit; and a transfer-condition searching unit that searches, in a plurality of the data excluding the data that includes the deleted area data for the layer, for the transfer condition corresponding to the destination data that is included in the frame without deleting the data including the deleted area data from the transfer-condition storage unit.