A coflow identification method includes: obtaining a weighted matrix by means of learning according to historical data in the network, where the weighted matrix is used to minimize a feature distance between data streams belonging to a same coflow and maximize a feature distance between data streams belonging to different coflows; computing a feature distance between any two data streams in the network according to metrics in the data stream layer data feature, the application layer data stream feature distance, the terminal aspect data feature distance, and the weighted matrix; and dividing the data streams in the network into several cluster sets by using a clustering algorithm and according to the feature distance between the any two data streams in the network, where each of the several cluster sets is a coflow.