The use of NP provides a way of developing high-speed routes, using standard off-the-shelf-hardware. Also, since NP's are programmable, they support development of high speed routers which are flexible, in the sense that their functionality can be easily modified or extended by downloading new code. This is the main reason why the trend towards NP is booming.

ASIC's had been developed because the specialized packet processing properties of networking have requirements beyond those of General Purpose Micro-Processors. ASIC's (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) are inflexible and expensive.

The classical networking challenge is to maintain stability while maximizing output and minimizing latency for the worst of the traffic.

The introduction of Intel's latest members of the IXP NP family solves this difficult problem using IXP2400, IXP2800. One of the distinguishing features of the IXP NP's are the microengine cluster which provides the demanding processing capability to service at the packet arrival rate. There are microengines running at 1.4 GHz in the IXP2800, while the IXP2400 can service OC-48 traffic with 8 microengines running at upto 600 MHz. Since OC-192 packets a process in real time, an elegant architectural feature was added to the IXP2800. This was added to support multiple encryption standards- Data Encryption Standards (DES), Advanced Encryption Standards (AES), Secure Hash Algorithms (SHA), providing on-chip performance to encrypt and authenticate IP Security at 10 Gbps when all traffic needs to be secured