Systems and methods for generating network flow information

A method of operating computing equipment that is coupled to flow information generation circuitry and that controls client switches in a monitoring network having a filter port that is coupled to a packet forwarding network and that receives tapped network packets from the packet forwarding network, the method comprising:

• with the computing equipment, providing configuration information to the flow information generation circuitry via a control path;
• with processing circuitry in the flow information generation circuitry, after receiving the configuration information, generating a set of instructions to generate candidate flow records and to reconcile the generated candidate flow records with any related active records based on the received configuration information;
• with the computing equipment, forwarding at least one network packet in the tapped network packets to the flow information generation circuitry through a forwarding path;
• and
• with the processing circuitry in the flow information generation circuitry, executing the set of instructions based on the at least one network packet to generate a corresponding candidate flow record and to reconcile the corresponding candidate flow record with any related active records.