A framework for QoS-aware traffic classification using semi-supervised machine learning in SDNs

Abstract

In this paper, a QoS-aware traffic classification framework for software defined networks is proposed. Instead of identifying specific applications in most of the previous work of traffic classification, our approach classifies the network traffic into different classes according to the QoS requirements, which provide the crucial information to enable the fine-grained and QoS-aware traffic engineering. The proposed framework is fully located in the network controller so that the real-time, adaptive, and accurate traffic classification can be realized by exploiting the superior computation capacity, the global visibility, and the inherent programmability of the network controller. More specifically, the proposed framework jointly exploits deep packet inspection (DPI) and semi-supervised machine learning so that accurate traffic classification can be realized, while requiring minimal communications between the network controller and the SDN switches. Based on the real Internet data set, the simulation results show the proposed classification framework can provide good performance in terms of classification accuracy and communication costs.