Representation levels and objective consistency of network traffic generation: a survey

Biying WANG; Baosheng WANG; Shuang ZHAO; Jinshu SU; Shuhui CHEN; Minxin WANG; Zhengpeng LI; Ziling WEI

doi:10.1631/ENG.ITEE.2026.0095

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Representation levels and objective consistency of network traffic generation: a survey

Regular Papers | Updated：2026-08-28

- Representation levels and objective consistency of network traffic generation: a survey
- Representation levels and objective consistency of network traffic generation: a survey
- ENGINEERING Information Technology & Electronic Engineering Vol. 27, Issue 8, Pages: 1-18(2026)
- Affiliations：
  
  College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
  Department of Information Technology, Hunan Police Academy, Changsha 410138, China
  Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing 100091, China
- Author bio：
  
  ✉ Ziling WEI, weiziling@nudt.edu.cn
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1631/ENG.ITEE.2026.0095
  CLC： TP393
- Received：05 April 2026，
  
  Revised：2026-07-10，
  
  Published：01 August 2026
- Accepted：
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Biying WANG, Baosheng WANG, Shuang ZHAO, et al. Representation levels and objective consistency of network traffic generation: a survey[J]. ENGINEERING Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, 2026, 27(8): 1-18.
DOI：

Biying WANG, Baosheng WANG, Shuang ZHAO, et al. Representation levels and objective consistency of network traffic generation: a survey[J]. ENGINEERING Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, 2026, 27(8): 1-18. DOI： 10.1631/ENG.ITEE.2026.0095.

摘要

Abstract

Network traffic research relies on large-scale

high-quality traffic data. However

obtaining such data remains difficult because of privacy constraints

collection costs

class imbalance

and continuous updates. These challenges have increased researchers’ interest in traffic generation. Although many generation methods have been proposed

existing studies and surveys often overlook two key questions: what form of traffic is generated and what practical objectives it can support. Based on 113 candidate records published from 2019 to 2026

this survey provides a detailed analysis of 39 representative network traffic generation studies through the lenses of representation levels and objective consistency. We organize existing methods into four representation levels and analyze how generated data relate to usage scenarios. We find that many methods preserve information that is useful for downstream tasks such as classification and intrusion detection

but task usefulness does not guarantee replayability or usability in real network environments. High-level representations are easier to model

yet they often discard protocol semantics

packet dependencies

and communication logic. We therefore distinguish task consistency from protocol consistency and show that the latter remains underexplored. We further summarize evaluation practices

discuss level-specific metrics

and highlight future directions including controllable generation

protocol-aware state-consistent synthesis

and engineering-oriented evaluation.

关键词

Keywords

references

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