Packet forwarding system and method

The embodiment of the invention discloses a data packet forwarding system and method. The system comprises exchanger hardware and a CPU (Central Processing Unit) platform. The exchanger hardware is connected with the CPU platform and used for receiving a data packet, judging whether the exchanger hardware is stored with an exchange rule matched with the data packet; if so, the data packet is forwarded according to the exchange rule; otherwise, the data packet is sent to the CPU platform. The CPU platform is used for extracting the application layer information from the data packet, carrying out characteristic matching on the application layer information and an internally configured application layer characteristic, and if the characteristic matching is finished, configuring an exchange rule corresponding to the data packet according to a data packet processing strategy corresponding to the application layer characteristic, writing the exchange rule into the exchanger hardware and transmitting the data packet to the exchanger hardware. By adopting the system provided by the embodiment of the invention, the seven-layer exchange can be realized at quite low cost and with quite high exchange performance.