2FA Sketch: Two-Factor Armor Sketch for Accurate and Efficient Heavy Hitter Detection in Data Streams

Abstract

Detecting heavy hitters, which are flows exceeding a specified threshold, is crucial for network measurement, but it faces challenges due to increasing throughput and memory constraints. Existing sketch-based solutions, particularly those using Comparative Counter Voting, have limitations in efficiently identifying heavy hitters. This paper introduces the Two-Factor Armor (2FA) Sketch, a novel data structure designed to enhance heavy hitter detection in data streams. 2FA Sketch implements dual-layer protection through an improved $\mathtt{Arbitration}$ strategy for in-bucket competition and a cross-bucket conflict $\mathtt{Avoidance}$ hashing scheme. By theoretically deriving an optimal $\lambda$ parameter and redesigning $vote^+_{new}$ as a conflict indicator, it optimizes the Comparative Counter Voting strategy. Experimental results show that 2FA Sketch outperforms the standard Elastic Sketch, reducing error rates by 2.5 to 19.7 times and increasing processing speed by 1.03 times.