Establishing the proper values of controller parameters is the most important thing to design in active queue management (AQM) for achieving excellent performance in handling network congestion. For example, the first well known AQM, the random early detection (RED) method, has a lack of proper parameter values to perform under most the network conditions. This paper applies a Nelder-Mead simplex method based on the integral of time-weighted absolute error (ITAE) for a proportional integral (PI) controller using active queue management (AQM). A TCP flow and PI AQM system were analyzed with a control theory approach. A numerical optimization algorithm based on the ITAE index was run with Matlab/Simulink tools to find the controller parameters with PI tuned by Hollot (PI) as initial parameter input. Compared with PI and PI tuned by Ustebay (PIU) via experimental simulation in Network Simulator Version 2 (NS2) in five scenario network conditions, our proposed method was more robust. It provided stable performance to handle congestion in a dynamic network.