A wireless network operating system for communication between a plurality of nodes of a network is provided. The operating system can enable an operator to define a centralized network control problem at a high level, decompose automatically the network control problem into a set of distributed subproblems, each subproblem characterizing a local behavior of a single session or a subset of sessions or a single node or a subset of nodes or a single protocol layer or a subset of protocol layers, to generate in an automated manner a set of solution algorithms, and send the set of solution algorithms to each node for execution at an associated node controller to optimize the parameters of a programmable protocol stack based on local state information at each node. A network device for use at a node in a wireless network, a method of wirelessly communicating between a plurality of nodes in a network, and a method of providing a wireless network operating system are also provided.