A switch controller includes a plurality of ports, a hash table, and a hash table control unit. The plurality of ports includes at least one bus port associated with ports connected to other switch controllers in a network. The hash table stores MAC addresses and VLAN ids of ports within the network. The hash table control unit hashes a MAC address and a VLAN id of a packet to identify a first location in the hash table. For each one of the VLAN ids stored in the hash table, one of the MAC addresses identifies one of the other switch controllers having ports belonging to the one of the VLAN ids without identifying each one of the ports of the one of the other switch controllers that belongs to the one of the VLAN ids.