To generate a representative dataset of real-world traffic in ISCX we defined a set of tasks, assuring that our dataset is rich enough in diversity and quantity. We created
accounts for users Alice and Bob in order to use services like Skype, Facebook, etc. Below we provide the complete list of different types of traffic and applications considered
in our dataset for each traffic type (VoIP, P2P, etc.). We captured a regular session and a session over VPN, therefore we have a total of 14 traffic categories: VOIP, VPN-VOIP,
P2P, VPN-P2P, etc. We also give a detailed description of the different types of traffic generated: Browsing, Email, Chat, Audio-Streaming, Video-Streaming, FTP, VoIP, P2P.
The traffic was captured using Wireshark and tcpdump, generating a total amount of 28GB of data. For the VPN, we used an external VPN service provider and connected to it
using OpenVPN (UDP mode). To generate SFTP and FTPS traffic we also used an external service provider and Filezilla as a client. To facilitate the labeling process, when capturing
the traffic all unnecessary services and applications were closed. (The only application executed was the objective of the capture, e.g., Skype voice-call, SFTP file transfer, etc.)
We used a filter to capture only the packets with source or destination IP, the address of the local client (Alice or Bob).
ISCXFlowMeter (formerly known as ISCXFlowMeter) has been written in Java for reading the pcap files
and create the csv file based on selected features. The dataset consists of labeled network traffic, including full packet in pcap format and csv (flows generated by CICFlowMeter)
also are publicly available for researchers.
The full research paper outlining the details of the dataset and its underlying principles:
- Gerard Drapper Gil, Arash Habibi Lashkari, Mohammad Mamun, Ali A. Ghorbani, "
Characterization of Encrypted and VPN Traffic Using Time-Related Features", In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy(ICISSP 2016), pages 407-414, Rome, Italy, 2016.
For more information and download the dataset, visit
this page.