Networking platforms have steadily become more programmable in response to today’s increasingly complex networks with rapidly changing requirements.

At the same time, there is a recognition that the language used to program them needs to provide a rich set of constructs that balance the need for efficient implementation and high-level abstractions for ease of programming. The result is NPL.

NPL is an open language for use by the community. It is designed to express the behavior of high performance, feature-rich networking platforms. It has sophisticated features that promote: