[Starlink] Main hurdles against the Integration of Satellites and Terrestial Networks

[Alexandre Petrescu]

Le 30/08/2023 à 18:51, Inemesit Affia a écrit :
> With the existence of solutions like OpenMTCProuter, SDWAN, policy 
> based routing or any solution in general that allows combination in a 
> sense of any number of IP links, I really don't see a point for 
> specific solutions. Can anyone enlighten me?

I would be interested to see how MTCP, QUIC, SDWAN and policy based 
routing can help an end-user smartphone take advantage simultaneously of 
a low latency offered by a drone-airplane and of a high bandwidth 
offered by a MEO-GEO sat.  This would be an ideal solution for UE; it 
would compete directly with the latency and bandwidths offered by most 
advanced fiber or 6G ground links, but less cable kludge or antenna towers.

I think even Starlink goes somehow in that direction when it puts sats 
at 70km high altitudes: it lowers the altitude and thus reduces latency, 
even though not as low as what a drone/airplane can do at 500m high; 
that lower altitude is combined with their high bandwidth, but in a same 
sat.  And, not sure what kind of protocols Starlink uses (not known 
whether starlink sats have IP addresses,  neither whether they are IPv6 
addresses; not known about what kind of MPTCP or QUIC is there, or is it 
only a complete L2 network).

It is said somewhere that kepler (a competitor somehow to starlink) sats 
might carry BGP routers, so that would make kepler sats to have IP 
addresses inside, if so.  But even that is not sure: it is not really 
sure that kepler runs BGP on sat, or alternatively kepler sats is also 
an entire L2 network that transports BGP (and thus IP) packets through.


> For home users an issue may be IP blocks for certain services like 
> Netflix when the egress is out of a VPN or cloud provider richer than 
> a residential provider


Not sure what it means?

Alex


>
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 2:57 PM Alexandre Petrescu via Starlink 
> <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>
>     Le 30/08/2023 à 14:10, Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink a écrit :
>     > Here is a report which summarizes the outcome of the last
>     Satellites
>     > conference
>     >
>     [https://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/39841-satellite-2023-summary-linking-up]
>     >
>     > The report highlights the two main hurdles against the
>     integration of
>     > satellites and terrestrial networks: standardization and
>     business model.
>     >
>     > "/Most of the pushback against closer integration of terrestrial
>     > wireless and satellite networks revolved around standardization.
>     This
>     > may just be growing pains and it likely reflects the relative
>     > positions of wireless and satellite along the maturity curve,
>     but some
>     > of the speakers were arguing against standardization. The basis of
>     > this argument was that the mobile industry only understands
>     standards,
>     > but the satellite industry is currently differentiating based on
>     > custom systems and capabilities. The feeling was that the satellite
>     > industry had focused on technology and not regulations or standards
>     > and changing that course would not be helpful to the industry in
>     the
>     > short term. Timing is important in this analysis because almost
>     > everyone agreed that at some point, standardization would be a good
>     > thing, but the concern was the best way to get to the point in the
>     > future. The other interesting argument against closer integration
>     > between wireless and satellite had to do with the business model.
>     > Several speakers questioned where the customers would go as
>     > terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks become more integrated.
>     The
>     > underlying issues seemed to include who is responsible for solving
>     > network issues and perhaps more importantly, who recognizes the
>     > revenue. These issues seem, perhaps a bit simplistically, to be
>     > similar to early wireless roaming issues. While these issues
>     created
>     > turbulence in the wireless market, they were solved and that is
>     > probably a template to address these challenges for the wireless
>     and
>     > satellite operators."/
>     > /
>     > /
>     > Comments?
>
>
>     It is an interesting report.
>
>     For standardisation standpoint, it seems SDOs do push towards
>     integration of 5G/6G and satcom; there are strong initiatives at
>     least
>     at 3GPP (NTN WI proposals) and IETF (TVR WG) in that direction.  But
>     these are SDOs traditionally oriented to land communications, rather
>     than space satcom.
>
>     I wonder whether space satcom traditional SDOs (which ones?) have
>     initiated work towards integration with 5G/6G and other land-based
>     Internet?
>
>     Alex
>
>     >
>     > Hesham
>     >
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