ACETA: Accelerating Encrypted Traffic Analytics on Network Edge

Derek Manning, Elizabethtown College
Peilong Li, Elizabethtown College
Xiaoban Wu, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Yan Luo, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Tong Zhang, Intel Corporation
Weigang Li, Intel Corporation

Abstract

Applying machine learning techniques to detect malicious encrypted network traffic has become a challenging research topic. Traditional approaches based on studying network patterns fail to operate on encrypted data, especially without compromising the integrity of encryption. In addition, the requirement of rendering network-wide intelligent protection in a timely manner further exacerbates the problem. In this paper, we propose to leverage x86 multicore platforms provisioned at enterprises' network edge with the software accelerators to design an encrypted traffic analytics (ETA) system with accelerated speed. Specifically, we explore a suite of data features and machine learning models with an open dataset. Then we show that by using Intel DAAL and OpenVINO libraries in model training and inference, we are able to reduce the training and inference time by a maximum order of 31x and 46x respectively while retaining the model accuracy.