A method and apparatus for establishing a fast-forwarding table are provided. The method comprises: when a communication packet is received, determining, according to matching rules of services set in a packet processing policy, a target service matching the communication packet; if a fast-forwarding table corresponding to the communication packet is not stored locally, obtaining a preset target priority of the target service, and determining a target resource utilization threshold corresponding to the target priority according to a preset correspondence between priorities and resource utilization thresholds; determining whether a current resource utilization is greater than the target resource utilization threshold; and establishing a fast-forwarding table corresponding to the communication packet if the current resource utilization is not greater than the target resource utilization threshold. With this disclosure, the memory pressure of the network device can be reduced, and the network device can be avoided to hang or restart.