1. A method, comprising: populating, based on one or more user-configurable control-plane parameters by a control plane of a particular packet switching appliance in a network, data plane entries to be used in data plane processing of packets within the particular packet switching appliance, with said user-configurable control-plane parameters defining a plurality of different groups of forwarding information base (FIB) entries from a forwarding information base of the particular packet switching appliance to be populated in said data plane entries; and data plane-processing, by the particular packet switching appliance, of a plurality of packets based on said populated data plane entries.