The technologies described herein are generally directed to modeling radio wave propagation in a fifth generation (5G) network or other next generation networks. For example, a method described herein can include, for a network application, identifying, by a system comprising a processor, a characteristic value of a performance characteristic associated with an uplink connection enabled via a network of a user equipment to application server equipment hosting the network application. The method can further include, based on the characteristic value and a criterion, selecting, by the system, a first packet size for the uplink connection. The method can further include communicating, by the system, to the user equipment, the first packet size for use with the uplink connection.