Embodiments of the present invention provide a method for configuring a switching device, wherein the method includes: setting a first flow entry in at least one flow table, where the first flow entry includes a match field, the match field is used for designating information that needs to be matched, and instructing the switching device to perform matching between a value of information that is of a received packet and needs to be matched and a first field of each record in a database, to obtain a first record matching the packet, where each record in the database includes the first field, and the first field is used for denoting a designated value of the information that needs to be matched. The present invention reduces a quantity of flow entries.