A forwarding entry update method and apparatus, the method including receiving a write operation packet, where the write operation packet has write operation information, where the write operation information has write operation data and a write operation address, where the write operation data indicates a forwarding entry, and where the write operation address indicates an address to which the write operation data is to be written in a memory, obtaining the write operation information from the write operation packet, and writing the write operation data into the memory according to the write operation address in the write operation information.