Abstract: There is provided a packet routing apparatus for performing an IP additional function processing for a packet in the middle of a packet routing processing without damaging the high speed characteristic of the packet routing processing. A unique address is determined for each of function accelerators 11 to 14 in the inside of an extended function module 6, the unique address is added to a packet by a physical address lookup unit 105, and a data distribution unit 112 distributes the packet to the function accelerator corresponding to the unique address.

Abstract: In a method of distributing a frame to a line during line aggregation communications, a transmission side data processing apparatus selects a line to which a frame is transmitted, so that the transmission data amounts of respective lines become uniform. Order information is inserted into the transmission frame and the frame is transmitted to the selected line. A reception side data processing apparatus sequentially executes a reception process for a received frame, in accordance with the order information derived from each received frame.