This topic describes how access control list (ACL) counters are maintained in hardware and software on the Cisco 8000 Series Router.
In Cisco IOS XR software, ACL counters are maintained both in hardware and software. Hardware counters are used for packet filtering applications. Software counters are used by all the applications mainly involving software packet processing.
Software counters are updated for the packets processed in software, for example, exception packets punted to the LC CPU for processing, or ACL used by routing protocols, and so on. The counters that are maintained are an aggregate of all the software applications using that ACL. To display software-only ACL counters, use the show access-lists ipv4 access-list-name [sequence number] command in EXEC mode.