BRIDGE EQUIPMENT

PURPOSE:To attain high processing efficiency and to allow the equipment to flexibly cope with the revision of the configuration of a local area network(LAN) system by providing 1st and 2nd tables to each bridge means (LAN board) so as to prevent the contention. CONSTITUTION:A bridge means (LAN boards 1-N) is coupled with each LAN in one to one correspondence and the bridge means are interconnected by buses. Each bridge means uses a 1st filtering table 132 and a 2nd forwarding table 131 registered and revised by a registration processing means to apply relay processing. Then the registration processing means monitors all packets sent from plural terminal equipments connecting to the LAN coupled with its own bridge means, collects the terminal number of addresses of the sender terminal equipment and registers them to the 1st table. Thus, the processing efficiency is improved and the means copes flexibly with the revision in the configuration of the LAN system.