Traffic Classification Model in Software-Defined Networks with Artificial Intelligence Elements

Application classification is essential to improve network performance. However, with the constant growth in the number of users and applications, as well as the scaling of networks, traditional classification methods cannot fully cope with the identification and classification of network applications with the required level of delay. The use of deep learning technology together with the architecture features of software-defined networks (SDN) will allow the implementation of a new hybrid deep neural network for application classification, which can provide high classification accuracy without manual selection and feature extraction. The proposed structure proposes a classification of applications, taking into account the logical centralized management on the SDN controller. The processed data is used to train a hybrid deep neural network consisting of stacked autoencoder with a high dimensionality of the hidden layer and an output layer based on softmax regression. The necessary network flow parameters can be obtained by processing traffic with a stacked auto-encoder instead of manual processing. The softmax regression layer is used as the final application classifier. The article presents simulation results that demonstrate the advantages of the proposed classification method in comparison with the support vector machine.