This read-write enumerated integer determines whether this IP Access Control rule is enforced in hardware at wire-speed or in software by the CPU as a regular rule. An admin chooses wire-speed(1) for high-traffic rules where CPU-based filtering would introduce unacceptable latency or load. For example, an admin filtering a high-bandwidth uplink would prefer wire-speed activation to avoid the router's CPU becoming a bottleneck for every packet inspected.