An apparatus for controlling an operation of a layered communication system, the layered communication system transmitting information through a communication channel, has a provider for providing a property of the communication channel, an extractor for extracting a first set of parameters of a first communication layer and a second set of parameters of a second communication layer to determine current statuses of the first and second communication layer, a provider for providing a first abstraction model and a second abstraction model, wherein each abstraction model models a characteristic of the first and second communication layers, respectively, a determiner for determining an optimized set of parameters to be used by each of the first and second communication layers based on the first and second abstraction models, the channel property and an optimization goal, a provider for providing the optimized sets of parameters to the first and second communication layers.