Hierarchical Internet Application Traffic Classification using a Multi-class SVM

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a hierarchical internet application traffic classification system based on SVM as an alternative overcoming the uppermost limit of the conventional methodology which is using the port number or payload information. After selecting an optimal attribute subset of the bidirectional traffic flow data collected from the campus, the proposed system classifies the internet application traffic hierarchically. The system is composed of three layers: the first layer quickly determines P2P traffic and non-P2P traffic using a SVM, the second layer classifies P2P traffics into file-sharing, messenger, and TV, based on three SVDDs. The third layer makes specific classification of the entire 16 application traffics. By classifying the internet application traffic finely or coarsely, the proposed system can guarantee an efficient system resource management, a stable network environment, a seamless bandwidth, and an appropriate QoS. Also, even a new application traffic is added, it is possible to have a system incremental updating and scalability by training only a new SVDD without retraining the whole system. We validate the performance of our approach with computer experiments.