ByteSGAN: A Semi-supervised Generative Adversarial Network for Encrypted Traffic Classification of SDN Edge Gateway in Green Communication Network

Abstract

With the rapid development of Green Communication Network, the types and quantity of network traffic data are accordingly increasing. Network traffic classification become a non-trivial research task in the area of network management and security, which not only help to improve the fine-grained network resource allocation, but also enable policy-driven network management. Meanwhile, the combination of SDN and Edge Computing can leverage both SDN at its global visiability of network-wide and Edge Computing at its low latency and good privacy-preserving. However, capturing large labeled datasets is a cumbersome and time-consuming manual labor. Semi-Supervised learning is an appropriate technique to overcome this problem. With that in mind, we proposed a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based Semi-Supervised Learning Encrypted Traffic Classification method called \emph{ByteSGAN} embedded in SDN Edge Gateway to achieve the goal of traffic classification in a fine-grained manner to further improve network resource utilization. ByteSGAN can only use a small number of labeled traffic samples and a large number of unlabeled samples to achieve a good performance of traffic classification by modifying the structure and loss function of the regular GAN discriminator network in a semi-supervised learning way. Based on public dataset 'ISCX2012 VPN-nonVPN', two experimental results show that the ByteSGAN can efficiently improve the performance of traffic classifier and outperform the other supervised learning method like CNN.