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Active networks present significant safety, security, and efficiency challenges. Domain-specific languages, i.e., languages providing only constructs relevant to a particular domain, provide a solution that balances these constraints. Safety and security can be ensured using verification techniques that exploit the restricted nature of such languages. Strategies have been developed for the compilation of domain-specific languages that provide both portability and efficiency. This paper presents a synthesis of work on the PLAN-P domain-specific language for programmable routers. We present the language design, representative experiments that have been carried out using the language, and new compilation strategies. End-to-end performance is typically comparable to that of hand-coded C implementations.