1. A method of managing network elements operating on a network, the method comprising: transmitting a request to receive at least one activity parameter of a network element operating on the network; monitoring the at least one activity parameter of the network element; determining whether a usage value of the at least one activity parameter exceeds a predetermined threshold usage value; wherein the monitoring is performed via a simple network management protocol (SNMP) agent application operating on the network element; wherein the determining is performed by detecting via the SNMP agent that the predetermined threshold usage value has been exceeded; initiating a corrective function via the SNMP agent locally on the network element, without first having a SNMP server initiate the corrective action; and transmitting results of the corrective function to the SNMP server.