METHOD AND DEVICE FOR TRANSFERRING PACKET

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a packet transfer method by which high speed packet transfer can easily be attained and to provide a packet transfer device employing the method. SOLUTION: The packet transfer device identifies cells from a head cell including a header of a packet with assembled cells to a cell before a next head cell of a succeeding series of cells received by the same VC among cells received from a plurality of VCs as one packet and transmits the packet to a packet transfer device 1 as cells with an assigned VC after the end of processing of the packet unit including path selection. The packet transfer device is provided with a packet multiplex processing section 2 that multiplexes a plurality of packets received from a plurality of the VCs onto the assigned VC and a routing processing section 3 that selects the packet path in the unit of packets, and both the packet multiplex processing and the routing processing are conducted on the inside.