FAST AND ADAPTIVE PACKET PROCESSING DEVICE AND METHOD USING DIGEST INFORMTION OF INPUT PACKET

A packet processing device is formed by a digest information generation unit configured to extract a plurality of prescribed bit sequences from an input packet, and generate a digest information capable of specifying at least a part of a processing to be applied to the input packet, according to values of the plurality of proscribed bit sequences; and a packet processing unit configured to process the input packet using an Instruction sequence to be applied to the input packet that is obtained according to the digest information generated by the digest information generation unit, where the digest information generation unit generates the digest information with respect to a next input packet while the packet processing unit carries out a processing for one packet.