Classification of access network types: Ethernet wireless LAN, ADSL, cable modem or dialup?

Ethernet, wireless LAN, ADSL, cable modem and dialup are common access networks, but have dramatically different characteristics. Fast and accurate classification of access network type can improve protocol or application performance significantly. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient end-end scheme to classify the type of an access network into three categories: Ethernet, wireless LAN and low-bandwidth connection. Our scheme is based on the intrinsic characteristics of the various access networks and utilizes the median and entropy of packet pair inter-arrival times. Extensive experiments show that our scheme obtains accurate classification results in a very short time (10 to 100 seconds).