Finding the highly efficient application signature through payload signature quality evaluation

Abstract

Internet traffic identification is an essential preliminary step for stable service provision and efficient network management. The payload signature-based-classification is considered as a reliable method for Internet traffic identification. But its performance is highly dependent on the number and the structure of signatures. If the numbers and structural complexity of signatures are not proper, the performance of payload signature-based-classification easily deteriorates. Therefore, in order to improve the performance of the identification system, it is necessary to regulate the numbers of the signature. In this paper, we propose a novel signature quality evaluation method to decide which signature is highly efficient for Internet traffic identification. We newly define the signature quality evaluation criteria and find the highly efficient signature through the method. Quality evaluation is performed in three different perspectives and the weight of each signature is computed through those perspectives values. And we construct the signature map(S-MAP) to find the highly efficient signature. The proposed method achieved an approximately fourfold increased efficiency in application traffic identification.