Systems, methods, apparatus and computer-readable medium are described for improving efficiency and robustness for processing network packets at a network device, such as a customer premises equipment (CPE). The network device may include a plurality of physical network interfaces for receiving and transmitting network packets, and one or more processing entities. The one or more processing entities may provide a first router for providing routing functionality, wherein the first router is not virtualized, enable a virtual machine to execute a second router for providing routing functionality and forward a network packet using the first router or the second router from the device. The one or more processors may be configured to execute instructions associated with the first router from user space.