[Starlink] Re: Dissecting Starlink: head-drop queuing, AQM, and flow dynamics (SIGCOMM '26)

[Nitinder Mohan <N.Mohan@tudelft.nl>]

Hi Kathie,

You are, indeed, absolutely correct. Our takeaway largely is that the AQM being used is proprietary, it resembles A-RED and CoDEL at some instances but its not a 1:1 match. SpaceX also confirms that there is some “inspiration". We have a discussion on this in sec 4.3 on page 8.

Best,

Nitinder

> On 22 Jul 2026, at 15:49, Kathleen Nichols via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> This is interesting work, thanks. But I want to point out that, if indeed the "Loss frequency grows with queue occupancy" that isn't CoDel which increases loss frequency with a persistent sojourn delay. (A large point of CoDel was to get away from queue occupancy as a congestion signal.)
> 
> 	Kathie
> 
> On 7/22/26 2:00 AM, Nitinder Mohan via Starlink wrote:
> ...
>>   *   There is a real AQM that deliberately drops to control occupancy. The uplink is aggressive and holds flows below a quarter of physical capacity. The downlink is more permissive. Loss frequency grows with queue occupancy, and the load-dependent profile looks closer to CoDel or adaptive RED than fixed RED.
> ...
> 
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