A Classification Method for Network Applications using BP Neural Network

It is necessary to understand the characteristics of network applications for network planning, network management and network security. This paper proposed a method to classify network applications by using BP neural network to parse network trace files. Firstly, six characteristics of network application flow are proposed by analyzing PCAP files. Secondly, based on the BP neural network model, its connection weights and thresholds are obtained through supervised training, and the architecture classification of network applications can be completed by inputting the PCAP datasets. We tested the proposed method on the PCAP datasets obtained from CERNET, and analyzed the influence of the network application flow characteristics on the BP neural network model. The experimental results show that the proposed method is a simple and practical method for network application classification.