| CPC H04L 43/026 (2013.01) [H04L 43/022 (2013.01); G06F 9/45558 (2013.01); G06F 2009/45587 (2013.01)] | 21 Claims |

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1. A method for a first computer system to perform packet flow monitoring, wherein the method comprises:
detecting a flow of one or more packets along a datapath between a source and a destination, wherein the source or the destination is a virtualized computing instance supported by the first computer system;
determining, from the one or more packets, source attribute information associated with the source and destination attribute information associated with the destination;
performing attribute-to-identifier mapping by (a) mapping the source attribute information to a source identifier having a reduced size compared to the source attribute information, or (b) mapping the destination attribute information to a destination identifier having a reduced size compared to the destination attribute information, or both;
generating flow information that includes (a) the source identifier identifying the source, or (b) the destination identifier identifying the destination, or both; and
interacting with a second computer system, or storage accessible by the second computer system, to enable the second computer system to obtain the flow information.
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