An apparatus for processing packets in a high speed router and a method thereof are provided. The high speed router includes a forward processor and a control processor where the forward processor having an input terminal processor and an output terminal processor. The output terminal processor manages a Layer 2 Address Table by dividing the Layer 2 Address Table into a layer 2 indirect address table and a layer 2 direct address table and by managing them. The indirect address table is directly indexed in the Next-hop Table of the input terminal processor table. The direct address table is composed of a hashing table for a destination IP address. Therefore, the system efficiency can be improved by reducing the memory which is used for storing the forwarding information table occupied by the forward processor and by reducing the IPC message between the control processor and the forwarding process.