Application-level traffic monitoring and an analysis on IP networks

Abstract

Traditional traffic identification methods based on well-known port numbers are not appropriate for the identification of new types of Internet applications. This paper proposes a new method to identify current Internet traffic, which is a preliminary but essential step toward traffic characterization. We categorized most current network-based applications into several classes according to their traffic patterns. Then, using this categorization, we developed a flow grouping method that determines the application name of traffic flows. We have incorporated our method into NG-MON, a traffic analysis system, to analyze Internet traffic between our enterprise network and the Internet, and characterized all the traffic according to their application types.