A Novel Distributed Stack Ensembled Meta-Learning-Based Optimized Classification Framework for Real-time Prolific IoT Traffic Streams

The concurrence of state-of-the-art Industrial 5G, Cyber-Physical Systems, Smart-Systems, Industrial Internet of Things, and Additive Manufacturing paves the next-level digital remodeling. However, the transfiguration unwittingly tailpiece an operational onus on the smart-environment operators. The multiplicity and classes of IoT devices operating in the intelligent environment are myriad. The characterization of ingress network traffic and the accurate classification of devices is necessary to efficiently manage the devices and offer cutting-edge security solutions and quality of Service (QoS). The paper addresses these challenges by offering a novel intelligent framework for traffic classification leveraging behavioral attributes of IoT traffic. The paper’s contributions to the research community are fourfold. Firstly, the paper proposes a novel IoT classification framework based on Stack-Ensemble for real-time high-volume IoT traffic. The experimental results indicate that the proposed novel Stack Ensemble model can extract the best out of base models and demonstrate an accuracy of 99.94%. The intelligent models are evaluated over multiple dimensions to project the isometric view of the model performance and the experimental results. To achieve that goal, all the performance metrics that most researchers most often miss have been elucidated. Secondly, the paper comprehends the flow-level statistical characteristics of IoT devices. Third, the paper offers the distributed, scalable, and portable framework architecture. The architecture is horizontally scalable, distributing the computational load. The framework offers an end-to-end industry-grade machine-learning pipeline and triumphs the vulnerabilities of existing solutions. Finally, the paper discusses the statistical insights into the intelligent model and the results of the experimentation study. The proposed work paves the opportunities for researchers, smart-environment operators, and developers to unfold the architecture and supplement the security solutions against cyber-attacks.