A mechanism for providing inventory information from distributed computing resources in an enterprise network in a manner that minimizes network traffic being sent from those computing resources to a centralized inventory server is provided. Bandwidth minimization is performed by generating a value corresponding to identifying information for each item inventoried on a computing resource and transmitting only those values to the inventory server. The generated value is shorter than a string containing the detailed information regarding the inventoried item, but is unique to that item. The inventory server then only requests more detailed information about an individual inventory item if a reported value has not previously been reported to the inventory server. In this manner, detailed information about a specific inventoried item is only transmitted through the network the first time that the item is inventoried and reported from any computer in the network. For any subsequent nodes reporting the same inventoried item, only the value is transmitted through the network and recorded within the inventory server. This avoids transmitting detailed information about each inventoried item for each computer during each computer report to an inventory server, thereby reducing network traffic.
