Disclosed herein are system, method, and computer program product embodiments for representing a forwarding information base (FIB) in a database. An embodiment operates by determining that a first routing prefix of a first forwarding entry in the FIB is a less specific routing prefix than a second routing prefix in a second forwarding entry in the FIB. The embodiment determines that a first next hop of the first routing prefix is equal to a second next hop of the second routing prefix. The embodiment removes the second forwarding entry from the FIB. The embodiment then inserts the first forwarding entry into a database (e.g., a longest exact match (LEM) database or a longest prefix match (LPM) database) based on a prefix length of the first routing prefix of the first forwarding entry.