PACKET COPYING MACHINE

PURPOSE:To maintain high speed communication of a general packet by discriminating whether a received packet is a multiple address communication packet or a general packet, implementing copying when the packet is the multiple address communication packet, stopping the copying when the packet is the general packet and sending the packet with priority so as to prevent increase in the hardware. CONSTITUTION:A reception packet inputted from an incoming line 21 (211-21M) is fed to a packet discrimination section 23 (231-23M) via a first-in first-out memory section 22 (221-22M), in which whether the packet is a multiple address communication packet or a general packet is discriminated. When the result of discrimination indicates the general packet, the received packet is fed to a selector 27 (271-27M) as an input A by a switch 25 (251-25M). When the result of discrimination indicates a multiple address communication packet, the packet is fed to a packet copy section 29 (291-29M), in which the packet is copied by number of paths specified by its identification number. When the general packet is inputted, the copying of the multiple address communication packet is stopped and the transmission of the general packet is sent with priority.