Bidirectional Flow-Based Image Representation Method for Detecting Network Traffic Service Categories

Abstract

Network traffic identification is crucial for network resource management and improving service quality. Traditional methods, such as port-based and deep packet inspection approaches, face challenges due to the increasing complexity of network environments, privacy concerns, and the emergence of encrypted traffic. This paper aims to address the issues of low accuracy and slow operation speed in encrypted traffic classification while ensuring the protection of user privacy. We propose a data processing method that transforms network traffic into images representing bidirectional flow packet arrival timestamps and packet sizes. By employing this data processing approach and utilizing deep recognition algorithms, the study conducts service analysis on network traffic. Experimental results demonstrate that the bidirectional flow-based image representation method achieves a 90.9% accuracy rate for the traffic analysis task on a TOR-encrypted imbalanced dataset, surpassing the accuracy of the unidirectional flow image method. Furthermore, the method also shows improvements in operation speed, enabling online network traffic detection.