An API is provided to an optical networking apparatus to facilitate uniform access, control and interaction with its multi-protocol optical networking modules (MPONM) by its applications. Each of the MPONM has a number of function blocks having corresponding drivers. In response to an application's request to initialize a MPONM, the initialization function of the API cooperates with the function block drivers to create a data structure for the MPONM, and returns a handle of the data structure to the application. Thereafter, in response to a need to have an operation performed in the packet filtering function block of a MPONM, the application makes the request to the API, including with the request the handle of the data structure of the MPONM. In response, the API allocates a packet filtering resource to perform the operation, and returns a handle corresponding to the allocated resource to the application for use in further requests. When the application is finished with the resource, the resource is de-allocated by the API.