A Review of Deep Learning Techniques for Encrypted Traffic Classification

Network traffic classification is significant for task such as Quality of Services (QoS) provisioning, resource usage planning, pricing as well as in the context of security such as in Intrusion detection systems. The field has received considerable attention in the industry as well as research communities where approaches such as Port based, Deep packet Inspection (DPI), and Classical machine learning techniques were thoroughly studied. However, the emergence of new applications and encryption protocols as a result of continuous transformation of Internet has led to the rise of new challenges. Recently, researchers have employed deep learning techniques in the domain of network traffic classification in order to leverage the inherent advantages offered by deep learning models such as the ability to capture complex pattern as well as automatic feature learning. This paper reviews deep learning based encrypted traffic classification techniques, as well as highlights the current research gap in the literature.