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Characterizing home network traffic: an inside view

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Abstract

The rapid spread of residential broadband connections and Internet-capable consumer devices in home networks has changed the landscape of Internet traffic. To gain a deep understanding of Internet traffic for home networks, this paper develops a traffic monitoring platform that collects and analyzes home network traffic via programmable home routers and traffic profiling servers. Using traffic data captured from real home networks, we present traffic characteristics in home networks and then apply principal component analysis to uncover temporal correlations among application ports. In light of prevalent unwanted traffic on the Internet, we characterize the intensity, sources, and port diversity of unwanted traffic toward home networks. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first study to characterize network traffic of Internet-capable devices from inside home network.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

    Kuai Xu & Feng Wang

  2. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Lin Gu

  3. Wuhan University, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China

    Jianhua Gao

  4. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Network, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Yaohui Jin

Authors
  1. Kuai Xu
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  2. Feng Wang
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  3. Lin Gu
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  4. Jianhua Gao
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  5. Yaohui Jin
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Correspondence to Kuai Xu.

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Xu, K., Wang, F., Gu, L. et al. Characterizing home network traffic: an inside view. Pers Ubiquit Comput 18, 967–975 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-013-0711-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-013-0711-x

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