Gearing up for the 21st century space race

Abstract

A new space race is imminent, with several industry players working towards satellite-based Internet connectivity. While satellite networks are not themselves new, these recent proposals are aimed at orders of magnitude higher bandwidth and much lower latency, with constellations planned to comprise thousands of satellites. These are not merely far future plans-the first satellite launches have already commenced, and substantial planned capacity has already been sold. It is thus critical that networking researchers engage actively with this research space, instead of missing what may be one of the most significant modern developments in networking. In our first steps in this direction, we find that this new breed of satellite networks could potentially compete with today's ISPs in many settings, and in fact offer lower latencies than present fiber infrastructure over long distances. We thus elucidate some of the unique challenges these networks present at virtually all layers, from topology design and ISP economics, to routing and congestion control.

"Internet from Space" without Inter-satellite Links

“…Due to the high velocity of satellites, end-to-end paths and their latencies change continually. Such variations have been pointed out in previous work [5,20]. We compare the impact of such variations on BP and hybrid connectivity on Starlink.…”

“…We thus attempt to quantify the utility of ISLs for such constellations: how important are ISLs to the capabilities of such networks, and how do the properties of LEO constellations with and without ISLs differ? Without ISLs, transoceanic distances must be bridged in some other manner than on-land ground stations; following the lead of recent work [5,29], we use in-flight aircraft to serve as relays in such settings. We then analyze the latencies for end-end network paths and their variations over time, attenuation due to weather, and network throughput under intuitive traffic scenarios.…”

A Distributed Survivable Routing Algorithm for Mega-Constellations With Inclined Orbits

“…There are a few papers that are concerned with megaconstellations. References [13], [14] and [15] are representative work. References [13] and [14] evaluated the end-to-end delay performance of mega-constellations and [15] investigated the topology design problem in mega-constellations.…”

Networking in Heaven as on Earth

“…In independent work that was developed in parallel, Bhattacherjee et al focus on the potential of LEO constellations to reduce latency, especially for long-distance traffic [7]. Their results demonstrate that for long distances a SN reduces latency.…”