In one embodiment, a system and method for managing a network deduplication dictionary is disclosed. According to the method, the dictionary is divided between available deduplication engines (DDE) in deduplication devices that support shared dictionaries. The fingerprints are distributed to different DDEs based on a hash function. The hash function takes the fingerprint and hashes it and based on the hash result, it selects one of the DDEs. The hash function could select a few bits from the fingerprint and use those bits to select a DDE.