In an approach for managing network sockets, a computer receives a request to create a network socket to transfer data. The computer identifies information associated with the received request, including one or more of: a default network protocol, one or more supported network protocols, ahead of time initialization, a data transfer policy, a failure policy, and a security policy. The computer creates a second level hash map based on the identified information, wherein the second level hash map includes the supported network socket protocols and a connection state. The computer determines a network protocol to utilize associated with the received request. The computer establishes a connection for the network socket over the determined network protocol.