Disclosed herein are systems and networks comprising a network operations server application for improving a packet-switched communications network, the application configured to: receive data from data source nodes; provide a management console allowing a user to configure a network multi-access protocol for: i) a node, ii) a type of node, iii) a group of nodes, iv) a type of data packet from a node, v) a type of data packet from a type of node, vi) a type of data packet from a group of nodes, or vii) a specific instance of a data packet from a node, the network multi-access protocol a scheduled or random access protocol; and dynamically create channel assignments to allocate bandwidth of the network among channels based on the configured network multi-access protocols to prevent network saturation and minimize data collisions in the packet-switched network.