Abstract: This paper collects network traffic of an industrial control system that is based on industrial Ethernet in a real environment. By analyzing the characteristics of the network, it is found that there is an obvious difference between the characteristics of industrial control network and ordinary IT network. The cause of the difference is carefully analyzed. The traffic of industrial control network has a relatively regularity. As a whole, the distribution packet intervals neither follow a Poisson distribution nor subject to heavy tailed distribution. In a small time scale, the traffic has a periodicity and it does not show self-similarity, while it is stationary in a large time scale. Finally, a multiple seasonal ARIMA model is used to make empirical analysis on the industrial network traffic. Results show that the model is feasible and reliable.