research-article

A browser-side view of starlink connectivity

Authors:

Mohamed M. Kassem,

Aravindh Raman,

Nishanth SastryAuthors Info & Claims

IMC '22: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference

Pages 151 - 158

https://doi.org/10.1145/3517745.3561457

Published: 25 October 2022 Publication History

Abstract

LEO satellite "mega-constellations" such as SpaceX's Starlink, Amazon's Kuiper, OneWeb are launching thousands of satellites annually, promising high-bandwidth low-latency connectivity. To quantify the achievable performance of such providers, we carry out a measurement study of the spatial and temporal characteristics as well as the geographic variability of the connectivity provided by Starlink, the current leader in this space. We do this by building and deploying a browser extension that provides data about web performance seen by 28 users from 10 cities across the world. We complement this with performance tests run from three measurement nodes hosted by volunteer enthusiasts in the UK, EU and USA. Our findings suggest that although Starlink offers some of the best web performance figures among the ISPs observed, there are important sources of variability in performance such as weather conditions. The bent-pipe connection to a satellite and back to earth also forms a significant component of the observed latency. We also observe frequent and significant packet losses of up to 50% of packets, which appear to be correlated with handovers between satellites. This has an effect on achievable throughput even when using modern congestion control protocols such as BBR or CUBIC.

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https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2024.3470330
Garcia JBeckerle MSundberg SBrunstrom A(2025)Modeling and predicting starlink throughput with fine-grained burst characterizationComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2025.108090234(108090)Online publication date: Mar-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2025.108090
Zhang YHan CChu FXiong WJia L(2024)Jamming Analysis between Non-Cooperative Mega-Constellations Based on Satellite Network CapacityElectronics10.3390/electronics1312233013:12(2330)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
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Index Terms

A browser-side view of starlink connectivity
1. Networks
  1. Network performance evaluation
    1. Network measurement

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IMC '22: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference

October 2022

796 pages

ISBN:9781450392594

DOI:10.1145/3517745

General Chairs:
Chadi Barakat
Inria, Université Côte d'Azur
,
Cristel Pelsser
University of Strasbourg
,
Program Chairs:
Theophilus A. Benson
Brown University
,
David Choffnes
Northeastern University

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 25 October 2022

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IMC '22

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IMC '22: ACM Internet Measurement Conference

October 25 - 27, 2022

Nice, France

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Overall Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,083 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2024.3470330
Garcia JBeckerle MSundberg SBrunstrom A(2025)Modeling and predicting starlink throughput with fine-grained burst characterizationComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2025.108090234(108090)Online publication date: Mar-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2025.108090
Zhang YHan CChu FXiong WJia L(2024)Jamming Analysis between Non-Cooperative Mega-Constellations Based on Satellite Network CapacityElectronics10.3390/electronics1312233013:12(2330)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13122330
Garcia JSundberg SBrunstrom A(2024)Fine-Grained Starlink Throughput Variation Examined With State-Transition Modeling2024 19th Wireless On-Demand Network Systems and Services Conference (WONS)10.23919/WONS60642.2024.10449629(69-76)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.23919/WONS60642.2024.10449629
Laniewski DLanfer EBeginn SDunker JDückers MAschenbruck N(2024)Starlink on the Road: A First Look at Mobile Starlink Performance in Central Europe2024 8th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA)10.23919/TMA62044.2024.10559110(1-8)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.23919/TMA62044.2024.10559110
Laniewski DLanfer EMeijerink Bvan Rijswijk-Deij RAschenbruck N(2024)WetLinks: A Large-Scale Longitudinal Starlink Dataset with Contiguous Weather Data2024 8th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA)10.23919/TMA62044.2024.10558998(1-9)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
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Kassem MSastry N(2024)$x$eoverse: A Real-time Simulation Platform for Large LEO Satellite Mega-Constellations2024 IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking)10.23919/IFIPNetworking62109.2024.10619898(1-9)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
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Izhikevich LEnghardt RHuang TTeixeira R(2024)A Global Perspective on the Past, Present, and Future of Video Streaming over StarlinkProceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems10.1145/37004128:3(1-22)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2024
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Bhosale VGavrilovska ABhardwaj K(2024)Krios: Scheduling Abstractions and Mechanisms for Enabling a LEO Compute CloudProceedings of the 2024 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing10.1145/3698038.3698566(322-340)Online publication date: 20-Nov-2024
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