A system and method is disclosed for communicating with a plurality of network processors, one or more of the processors having a different operating environment, includes receiving an application programming interface (API) call from a user application, the API call including a call address identifying one or more of the network processors; and accessing a memory that identifies an appropriate form for the API call for each operating environment implemented by each network processor identified by the call address; and building one or more messages for the network processors identified by the call address, each of the one or more messages including the appropriate form for the API call for the operating environment of each of the network processors to receive any particular message.