Traffic Classification – Packet-, Flow-, and Application-based Approaches

Traffic classification is a very important mathematical and statistical tool in communications and computer networking, which is used to find average and statistical information of the traffic passing through certain pipe or hub. The results achieved from a proper deployment of a traffic analysis method provide valuable insights, including: how busy a link is, the average end-toend delays, and the average packet size. These valuable information bits will help engineers to design robust networks, avoid possible congestions, and foresee future growth. This paper is designed to capture the essence of traffic classification methods and consider them in packet-, flow-, and application-based contexts.