Rule numbering

ACL rules can be manually numbered or automatically numbered. This section describes how automatic ACL rule numbering works.

If you do not assign an ID to the rule you are creating, the system automatically assigns it a rule ID. The rule numbering step sets the increment by which the system automatically numbers rules. For example, the default ACL rule numbering step is 5. If you do not assign IDs to rules you are creating, they are automatically numbered 0, 5, 10, 15, and so on. The wider the numbering step, the more rules you can insert between two rules.

By introducing a gap between rules rather than contiguously numbering rules, you have the flexibility of inserting rules in an ACL. This feature is important for a config order ACL, where ACL rules are matched in ascending order of rule ID.

The ID automatically assigned to an ACL rule takes the nearest higher multiple of the numbering step to the current highest rule ID, starting with 0.

For example, if the numbering step is 5 (the default), and there are five ACL rules numbered 0, 5, 9, 10, and 12, the newly defined rule is numbered 15. If the ACL does not include any rule, the first rule is numbered 0.

Whenever the step changes, the rules are renumbered, starting from 0. For example, if there are five rules numbered 5, 10, 13, 15, and 20, changing the step from 5 to 2 causes the rules to be renumbered 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8.