Profiling IP hosts based on traffic behavior

Internet is growing very fast in size and applications which causes more complexity in its structure which demands more efforts for monitoring and management. For an efficient network security and management it's required to have a better understanding of its structure and traffic caused by different elements (IP hosts). There is a need to improve systems and methods that can provide this kind of knowledge and understanding. The objective of this research is to study the behavior of IP Network nodes (IP hosts) from the prospective of their communication behavior patterns to setup hosts' behavior profiles of the observed IP nodes by clustering hosts into groups of similar communication behaviors. There are many potential applications of this work; the results of this research will be useful to the network management and Network Security Situational Awareness (NSSA) in addition to its applications in studying the network user's behavior.