The fairness of communication traffic guaranteed within an RPR ring is guaranteed also at a ring interconnection. Transmit weight information used for fairness control is extracted from RPR control information in an arrival packet. In addition to this transmit weight information, a source address, a service class, a fairness bit, and a ring transmit direction are also extracted. If the packet has a fairness bit of "0," the packet is temporarily stored in an output queue by service class. If the packet has a fairness bit of "1," the packet is weighted by source and ring transmit direction, based on the transmit weight information, and is temporarily stored in an output queue by source and ring transmit direction. Reading of packets from the output queue by service class is performed prior to reading of packets from the output queue by source and ring transmit direction.
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