Selective user plane monitoring multiple monitoring probes when a serving gateway has multiple ip addresses

A method for selective user plane monitoring in a wireless network, the method comprising steps of:

• receiving, by a network packet broker, a plurality of packets comprising user plane data from one or more tunnels created to enable direct transmission of the user plane packets from user equipment to a service getaway (SGW) comprising a plurality of units, each of the plurality of units having a unique IP address;
• receiving, by the network packet broker, a plurality of packets comprising control plane data from one or more channels created to enable transmission of the control plane packets from a base transceiver station to the plurality of units of the SGW;
• transmitting, by the network packet broker, the received plurality of user plane packets and the received plurality of control plane packets to a plurality of monitoring probes operatively coupled to the network packet broker, wherein each subset of user plane packets representing packets being processed by a particular SGW unit is transmitted to a particular monitoring probe of the plurality of probes;
• generating, by the plurality of monitoring probes, a first plurality of metrics associated with the received control plane packets;
• and
• selectively generating, by the plurality of monitoring probes, a second plurality of metrics associated with the received user plane packets based on one or more identifiers.