1. A computer-implemented method for collecting metrics on a network element, comprising: (a) receiving, on the network element, a specification of the objects on the network element to monitor; (b) querying, on the network element, an object data structure representing management information of the network element to identify instances of each of the specified objects; (c) for respective instances identified in (b), querying, on the network element, the object data structure for metric values associated with the respective instance; and (d) transmitting, from the network element to a network information server over a network, data representing the instance and the associated metric value.