diff --git a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/pyproject.toml b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/pyproject.toml
index fe60ca1251..aa2d8083ec 100644
--- a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/pyproject.toml
+++ b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/pyproject.toml
@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ classifiers = [
 dependencies = [
   "opentelemetry-instrumentation == 0.46b0.dev",
   "opentelemetry-api ~= 1.11",
-  "opentelemetry-sdk ~= 1.11",
   "psutil ~= 5.9",
 ]
 
diff --git a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/system_metrics/__init__.py b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/system_metrics/__init__.py
index 74d4f6a431..6342d287d5 100644
--- a/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/system_metrics/__init__.py
+++ b/instrumentation/opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics/src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/system_metrics/__init__.py
@@ -91,7 +91,6 @@
 from opentelemetry.instrumentation.system_metrics.package import _instruments
 from opentelemetry.instrumentation.system_metrics.version import __version__
 from opentelemetry.metrics import CallbackOptions, Observation, get_meter
-from opentelemetry.sdk.util import get_dict_as_key
 
 _logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
@@ -638,8 +637,8 @@ def _get_system_network_connections(
                     net_connection, metric
                 )
 
-            connection_counters_key = get_dict_as_key(
-                self._system_network_connections_labels
+            connection_counters_key = tuple(
+                sorted(self._system_network_connections_labels.items())
             )
 
             if connection_counters_key in connection_counters: