One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for compressing a forwarding table. The technique includes selecting, from a listing of network prefixes, a plurality of network prefixes that are within a range of a subnet. The technique further includes sorting the plurality of network prefixes to generate one or more subgroups of network prefixes and selecting a first subgroup of network prefixes included in the one or more subgroups of network prefixes. The technique further includes generating a synthetic supernet based on the first subgroup of network prefixes.