ACL limits issues

If you keep within the supported limits of ACL usage as shown in the table below, you are unlikely to run into system limits issues. ACLs should instantiate quickly and correctly.

The following software limits apply to ACL names:

An ACL name must be unique, 1 through 63 characters long, and must begin with a–z, A–Z or 0–9. You can also use underscore (_) or hyphen (-) in an ACL name, but not as the first character.
Rule sequence numbers can range from 1 through 65535.

The following table displays the maximum numbers of ACLs and ACL rules supported for each device.

Table 1. ACL and rule software limits
ACL type (standard and extended)	Maximum ACLs per type per device	Maximum rules per ACL	Maximum total rules per ACL type
Layer 2	2048	2038	102400
IPv4	2048	2048	102400
IPv6	2048	2048	102400

As you approach or exceed combinations of these limits, you might encounter slow instantiation of ACL rules.

Delays of several minutes can occur in the instantiation of ACL rules and counters if the number of ACLs or VLANs is excessive.

To display the hardware instantiation status (Active/Partial/In Progress/Inactive), run the show access-list command.