The present disclosure provides connection management techniques based on graph neural networks (GNN) and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to optimize user association and load balancing. A graph structure of a communication network is considered for the GNN architecture and DRL is used to learn parameters of the GNN algorithm/model. Connection management is defined as a combinatorial graph optimization problem, and the DRL mechanism uses the underlying graph to learn weights of the GNN for an optimal user connections or associations. The connection management techniques can consider local network features to make better decisions to balance network traffic load while network throughput is also maximized. Implementations are provided based on edge computing frameworks include the Open RAN (O-RAN) architecture. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.