The present application provides a method and an apparatus for configuring and delivering a flow table entry. The method comprises: a switch sending, to a controller, a request message for requesting delivering a flow table entry, the request message carrying a to-be-forwarded data packet; after the controller receives the request message, the controller generating all flow table entries matching the to-be-forwarded data packet, and returning, to the switch, a response message carrying all the flow table entries matching the to-be-forwarded data packet; after then switch receives the response message, the switch extracting all the flow table entries matching the to-be-forwarded data packet from the response message; and aggregating all the extracted flow table entries into flow table entries of a hardware layer, and when the switch supports the flow table entries of the hardware layer, the switch configuring the flow table entries of the hardware layer into a flow table of the hardware layer. The method and the apparatus for configuring and delivering a flow table entry in the present application can shorten the time of configuring flow table entries of a hardware layer into a flow table of the hardware layer, can shorten the delay of forwarding the data packets, and can reduce the number of lost packets of the data packets.