A fast identification method for P2P flow based on nodes connection degree

P2P traffic has taken up the most significant portion of the network traffic. Effective identification of P2P traffic becomes an important role for network traffic management. However, with the wide application of dynamic port and content encrypted techniques, traditional P2P identification methods are powerless. To address the issues of port hopping and unconspicuous application characters, a fast identification method of P2P flow is proposed in this study, in which the connection degree distribution of network nodes is used to judge the effective character of P2P flow. At the same time, some common P2P protocols are tested with the method, including HTTP, OICQ, DNS and Edonkey. Experimental results show that using this identification method can quickly and effectively judge P2P flow. The method can also deal with network congestion to a certain extent by identifying and monitoring P2P traffic.