Embodiments described herein provide a switch. The switch can include one or more ports, a communication module, and a flow rule management module. During operation, the communication module obtains a flow rule from a notification message from a controller of a software-defined network. The flow rule management module then determines whether a priority value of the flow rule is in a local flow table. The flow table can store flow rules received from the controller. If the priority value of the flow rule is not in the local flow table, the flow rule management module stores the flow rule in a location of the flow table allocated for the priority value.