Patent attributes
A packet forwarding apparatus is provided which can minimize traffic detoured to a backup path liable to be degraded in communication quality in the event of a link failure to thereby improve the communication quality. To this end, a technique is provided in which an output label decision unit and an output physical port ordinal number search unit which are included in a destination decision unit decide, from a header of an input packet, an output label of the packet, a first logical link to which the packet is to be outputted and a first physical link constituting the first logical link. When a failure takes place in the first physical link, the detour decision unit changes the output label to a backup label and the first physical link to a second physical link constituting a second logical link.
