Referencing some studies on Starlink and SpaceX, this is a great example of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology providing high-bandwidth network access. However, as you know, no matter how large the bandwidth, latency remains one of the key factors affecting user experience and application traffic performance.
Moreover, satellites are linked to ground stations, which then connect to Internet peering or exchange points to retrieve the required data via traffic routing. This total latency may not always be predictable due to satellite movement, variations in the distance between the user’s access antenna and the satellite, and the routing path between the ground station and the client machine.
Now, imagine if a CDN node were in space—embedded within the satellite itself. If a satellite operated as a Layer 3 router gateway, could we integrate a server farm with SSD storage to provide caching and content delivery services?
#ripe #atlas #starlink #cloudflare #CDN #latency
https://bgptrace.com/atlas/starlink
[1] Poster: Twinkle, Twinkle, Streaming Star: Illuminating CDN Performance over Starlink, Nitinder Mohan – Delft University of Technology – Delft, Netherlands, Rohan Bose – Technical University of Munich – Munich, Germany, Jörg Ott – Technical University of Munich – Munich, Germany, IMC ’24, November 4–6, 2024, Madrid, Spain https://www.nitindermohan.com/documents/2024/pubs/leoCDN_IMC2024_poster.pdf