A router (20) for switching data packets from a source (10) to a destination (30) in a network in which the router includes a distributed memory. The distributed memory includes two or more memory banks. Each memory bank is used for storing uniform portions of a data packet received from a source (10) and linking information for each data packets to allow for extraction of the uniform portions of a data packets from distributed locations in memory in proper order after a routing determination has been made by the router (20).
