Our paper "A Multifaceted Look at Starlink Performance" has been accepted at ACM The Web Conference (WWW) 2024! Led by Hendrik Cech with contributions from Rohan Bose, Saeed Fadaei, Mohamed Kassem, Prof. Nishanth Sastry, Prof. Jörg Ott, and myself, this work presents the most comprehensive measurement study of Starlink to date, examining performance from multiple perspectives across different continents and use cases.
Our study involved measurements from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America over months of data collection, analyzing latency, throughput, availability, and jitter across diverse applications including web browsing, video streaming, VoIP, and bulk transfer. The research examines "the good" (low-latency access to remote locations, competitive performance), "the bad" (performance variability based on location, dependence on ground station infrastructure), and "the ugly" (challenges with mobility and handoffs, economic and sustainability questions).
The analysis reveals that performance is heavily influenced by ground station proximity, shows significant fluctuations over time, and varies by application type. Terrestrial connectivity remains critical to overall performance, and network behavior changes as the user base grows.
This paper has already had significant impact, leading to the IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP 2025), media coverage in Deutsche Welle and Rest of World, runners-up in the RIPE Labs article competition, and informing both industry practices and policy discussions. True to our commitment to reproducible research, we're making our measurement data and methodologies available to the community. This comprehensive study establishes a foundation for future research on LEO satellite networks as constellations continue to expand and evolve.
Conference: ACM WWW 2024
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