Patent ID: 7320132

Claim:
In an optical networking apparatus having a plurality of multi-protocol optical networking modules (MPONM), at least one of said MPONM having a plurality of function blocks, a method comprising: requesting an initialization function of an MPONM application programming interface (API) to initialize a first of said MPONM, including with the initialization request a first identification of a first device driver of a first connection interface to which the first MPONM is attached; receiving from the MPONM API a first handle of a first data structure cooperatively created by utilizing the initialization function of the MPONM API with service routines of the function blocks, in response to the initialization request; and requesting an externalized function of the MPONM API to perform a first operation in a first function block of the first MPONM, including with the request to perform the first operation the first handle of the first data structure created for the first MPONM.