Patent ID: 8438248

Claim:
A method comprising: conducting, by a learning component of a server of a network, different trials of one or more options in different states of a network communication between a client and the server via a protocol of the network communication, wherein each trial is defined by a combination of the one or more options occurring at a particular state of the network communication; receiving, by the learning component, performance feedback for the different trials as rewards; and utilizing, by the learning component, the different trials and their associated resulting rewards to improve a decision-making policy made by an option negotiation component of the server for negotiation of one or more options, wherein the one or more options defining specifications of the network communication between the server and the client, wherein the decision-making policy is used to choose one or more actions to maximize file transfer performance based on the one or more options as negotiated by the option negotiation component, wherein the option negotiation component to serve as an intelligent agent to interact with multiple environments and provide a trial option for each of the multiple environments and receive the rewards as the performance feedback.