In general, embodiments of the invention relate to a method of programming a data plane forwarding information base (FIB). The method includes obtaining, by a FIB entry optimizer in a control plane, a new entry to be loaded into the data plane FIB, making a first determination, by the FIB entry optimizer, that the data plane FIB is not full; and based on the first determination: loading, by the FIB entry optimizer, the new entry into the data plane FIB.