From Ethernet to Wi-Fi: Flow Feature Selection and Construction for Traffic Classification

Francisco Rau, Petia Georgieva, Carlos Herranz, Iñaki Val, Joaquin Perez

Flow-based traffic classifiers trained on Ethernet data may lose accuracy when applied to Wi-Fi traffic. This paper proposes a five-stage procedure for selecting and constructing features that enable Wi-Fi flow classification using models trained only on Ethernet data. The procedure removes the transport protocol identifier, examines rate dependence, compares feature distributions and the information each feature provides for the application classes, reduces redundancy, and constructs normalized packet-size and temporal features. Ethernet and Wi-Fi traffic are simulated in ns-3, with Wi-Fi using Best Effort access category. Labelled Wi-Fi data from six development scenarios are used for feature design, while a separate scenario is reserved for final testing. The evaluation compares feature sets, examines threshold sensitivity, and analyses classification errors under different traffic conditions.