What Is NaaS (Network-as-a-Service)?
Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) is a cloud delivery model for network infrastructure. Instead of purchasing and managing physical hardware, enterprises consume network capacity as a service — ordered on demand, billed by usage, and controlled through APIs rather than change tickets.
In practical terms, NaaS means your internet or Ethernet circuit is no longer a static resource. You can increase or decrease bandwidth in minutes, scale capacity for a specific workload window, and return to a baseline tier when the window closes. The carrier's infrastructure handles the provisioning; you control it through software.
Lumen's Internet on Demand (IoD) is the leading NaaS internet product in the US enterprise market. It offers 14 bandwidth tiers from 1 Mbps to 100 Gbps, billed by the hour at whatever tier you've ordered. Ethernet on Demand (EoD) follows the same model for private Layer 2 connections between sites.
What Bandwidth Scheduling Means in a NaaS Context
Bandwidth scheduling is the practice of defining when your NaaS circuit should be at each bandwidth tier — and automating the tier changes so they happen without manual intervention.
A simple schedule might look like this: 1 Gbps during business hours (8am–6pm weekdays), 100 Mbps overnight and on weekends. A more sophisticated schedule layers in workload-specific windows: 5 Gbps for a nightly backup from 11pm–3am, 200 Mbps on Saturday morning for a scheduled data sync, and 10 Gbps on the last business day of each month for financial close processing.
The key insight is that NaaS billing is based on the tier you *ordered*, not the bandwidth you *used*. A circuit running at 1 Gbps at 3am on a Sunday costs the same as one pushing full capacity during a peak business event. Scheduling closes that gap.
How NaaS APIs Enable Programmatic Bandwidth Changes
The API is what makes automation possible. NaaS providers expose a REST API that accepts bandwidth change orders, tracks their status, and returns a completion event when the change takes effect. The typical Lumen IoD API flow:
1. Authenticate — POST your client ID and client secret to the token endpoint (OAuth2 client credentials flow) 2. Submit a change order — POST the circuit ID and target bandwidth tier to the order endpoint 3. Poll for completion — use the returned order ID to check status until the response shows COMPLETED (typically 2–5 minutes) 4. Handle exceptions — catch API errors, circuit-locked states, or unsupported tier combinations and trigger retry logic or alerts
This API-first design means any sufficiently capable scheduler can drive bandwidth changes automatically. The challenge is building the scheduling logic, order management, cost modeling, and operational tooling on top of that raw API — which is what purpose-built NaaS bandwidth schedulers do.
Why Enterprises Schedule NaaS Bandwidth
Cost reduction. This is the primary driver. Most enterprise circuits run at a high bandwidth tier 24/7, even though utilization drops significantly outside business hours. For a circuit billed at roughly $1.07/hr at 1 Gbps, dropping to 100 Mbps (~$0.46/hr) for 500 off-peak hours per month saves approximately $305 on a single circuit. Enterprises with 3–10 circuits see these savings multiply without any incremental software cost.
Workload alignment. Some workloads require temporary bandwidth spikes: data center migrations, nightly backups, disaster recovery tests, large file transfers. Scheduling a high-bandwidth window for exactly the duration of the workload — and returning to a lower tier immediately after — gives the workload full capacity without paying full rates around the clock.
Operational predictability. Manual bandwidth changes are prone to human error. Forgetting to drop the tier after a maintenance window, ordering the wrong tier, missing a scheduled workload event — these mistakes have real cost consequences on hourly-billed circuits. Automated scheduling removes the human from the loop for routine tier changes.
Auditability. Every scheduled change generates a logged API transaction with timestamps, tier values, and completion status. This creates an auditable record of every bandwidth event — useful for cost reconciliation, capacity planning, and demonstrating cost governance to finance teams.
What a NaaS Bandwidth Scheduler Does
A NaaS bandwidth scheduler is software that sits between your scheduling logic and the NaaS API. At its core, it does three things:
Manages a schedule. A visual calendar interface lets network engineers define bandwidth events — start time, end time, target tier, recurrence pattern — without writing API calls. The calendar shows all circuits and all events in one view, making it easy to spot gaps, overlaps, and off-peak coverage across the portfolio.
Submits API orders. At each scheduled event start time, the scheduler authenticates to the NaaS API, submits the bandwidth change order, and polls for completion. If the order fails, the scheduler retries with backoff logic and sends an alert if the change cannot complete. This removes the need for cron jobs, scripts, or manual portal access.
Tracks costs. Because NaaS billing is hourly, the financial impact of a schedule is calculable before the first order fires. A good scheduler displays the projected cost of your current schedule against a flat-rate baseline — so you can quantify savings before committing to a configuration.
Apptifi adds Microsoft 365 calendar sync for dynamic scheduling (bandwidth events triggered automatically by calendar entries) and Defender Plus integration for managing network threat settings alongside bandwidth scheduling.
How to Get Started with NaaS Bandwidth Scheduling
Getting up and running with NaaS bandwidth scheduling takes less than 30 minutes if you have your API credentials ready.
Step 1: Obtain your NaaS API credentials. From the Lumen Marketplace portal, retrieve your client ID, client secret, and circuit ID. Request sandbox credentials as well — you will use those to validate your setup before touching production.
Step 2: Connect your scheduler. In Apptifi, enter your credentials in Settings and enable sandbox mode. Use the "Test Connection" button to confirm authentication before proceeding.
Step 3: Define your schedules. Open the visual calendar and create your first bandwidth events. Start with the simplest pattern: a peak tier for business hours and a reduced tier overnight and on weekends. Add workload-specific windows as a second layer.
Step 4: Validate in sandbox. Submit a test event in sandbox mode. Confirm the order processes, the status transitions to COMPLETED, and the circuit reflects the correct tier in the inventory panel.
Step 5: Switch to production. Once sandbox validation passes, flip the environment toggle to production and enter your live credentials. Every configured event will now fire automatically at the scheduled time.
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Apptifi is the visual NaaS bandwidth scheduler built for enterprise teams running Lumen IoD and EoD circuits. Connect your API credentials, define your schedule, and start saving — plans start at $50/month. [Try Apptifi free for 14 days.](/)