Novel dynamic multiple classification system for network traffic.

•A new multiple classification method for network traffic, DMTCS, is proposed.•DMTCS applies a dynamic cluster model of short documents to do the classification.•The previous traffic distribution information is used in the classification.•DMTCS does not require the prior knowledge of target applications and can tolerant with TCP and UDP.•DMTCS preserves high accuracy for the traffic with dynamic and imbalanced traffic distribution.