To construct a high-speed and reliable IPv6 network that supports an information society, a high-speed router and switch architecture and new quality of service (QoS) control mechanisms have been developed. The architecture that adopts distributed hardware engines for IPv4 and IPv6 packets achieves wire-rate forwarding for 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The QoS control mechanisms, by controlling hierarchical bandwidths, can guarantee the communications of important data such as mission critical data for each network user, assuring bandwidths for each user. A next generation router (GR4000) and a switch (GS4000) based on this architecture provide 320 Gbps maximum capacity with the QoS control mechanisms as well as flow filtering and flow-statistics collection.