A method for programming route hardware in network devices. The method includes: receiving, by a network device, route updates, selecting from the route updates, a set of selected routes to be used for routing, assigning multiple timestamps to the set of selected routes, programming the set of selected routes into a software-implemented forwarding information base (FIB), segmenting the set of selected routes in the software-implemented FIB into at least a first batch of routes and a second batch of routes, programming the first batch of routes into a hardware-implemented FIB, after the programming, determining a last timestamp, where the last time stamp is the oldest timestamp of the timestamps where all routes associated with the last timestamp have been successfully programmed into the hardware-implemented FIB, and advertising all routes of the first batch that are associated with a timestamp that is no older than the last timestamp.