Sketch-BF: A fast algorithm for finding top-k flows

Finding top-k flows plays an essential role for many network managements. Since the line rates keep increasing in networks, finding top-k flows precisely and quickly becomes more challenging. Existing algorithms for top-k finding can achieve high precision suffering from slow speed. In this paper, the authors propose Sketch-BF, which is a novel top-k finding solution that is much faster than existing algorithms while ensuring high precision. The core idea is to add a bloom filter variant between sketch and heap to accelerate by significantly reducing the min-heap update. The authors' experimental results show that, while maintaining precision, Sketch-BF has about two to five times higher insertion speed compared with the state-of-the-art.