Example embodiments described herein provide systems and methods for transmitting data packets between a protocol sender and a protocol receiver in a cloud environment, having either the protocol sender or the protocol receiver residing within a virtualized host. A protocol acceleration module may observe the data packets transmitted along the data path between the protocol sender and the protocol receiver using protocol stack configuration information of the protocol sender. The protocol acceleration module may override the protocol stack configuration information with policy-based protocol stack configuration information such that data packets transmitted from the protocol acceleration module to the protocol receiver use the policy-based protocol stack configuration information. For various embodiments, the protocol stack configuration information of the protocol sender is not modified.