1. In consumer premises equipment (CPE) having a Java-based software environment and a plurality of applications, a method of providing access to at least one of a plurality of network-specific application programming interfaces (APIs), comprising: providing an API manager within said CPE; providing a registry associated with said API manager, said registry adapted to register said plurality of network-specific APIs; running at least one of said plurality of applications with a communication protocol stack comprising a network-agnostic API, said network-agnostic API having a first privilege, at least one of said plurality of network-specific APIs also being required by said at least one of said plurality of applications; accessing said API manager to obtain said at least one network-specific API, said network-specific API having a second privilege; and based at least in part on said first and second privileges, said communication protocol stack loading said at least one network-specific programming interface with the network-agnostic interface for use by said at least one application.