Traffic classification: Issues and challenges

Traffic classification has been extensively examined in recent years, as it is widely used in network management, design, security, advertising and research. In the past few years, the traffic classification techniques have been evolved along with the development of Internet protocols and applications, and many approaches have been investigated, proposed and developed. Nowadays, the ever increasing network bandwidth, the constantly sophisticated applications and the growth incentives to confuse classification systems to avoid filtering or blocking are among the reasons that traffic classification remains one of the hot areas in network research. In this paper, we first attempt to present an analysis of the existing traffic classification techniques, and dwell on their issues and challenges, then outline some recommendations that can improve the performance of traffic classification systems.