A Large-Scale IPv6-Based Measurement of the Starlink Network
Bingsen Wang, Xiaohui Zhang, Shuai Wang, Li Chen, Jinwei Zhao, Dan Li, Yong Jiang
TL;DR
This work tackles the challenge of understanding Starlink's large-scale IPv6 network by introducing a router-centric outside-in measurement pipeline that exhaustively discovers active Starlink user routers and maps the backbone. By leveraging GeoIP-prefixed IPv6 patterns and targeted traceroutes, the authors identify ~5.98 million user-router addresses across 208 regions in 165 countries and map 49 PoPs with 98 interconnections, enabling comprehensive statistical analyses of users, PoPs, and IPv6 address assignments. Latency analyses reveal region- and PoP-specific mean and variance patterns and propose a variance-based method to distinguish user types, while longitudinal data suggest performance improvements driven by the deployment of V2 Mini satellites. The work delivers publicly accessible backbone and, under certain conditions, user-router datasets to support ongoing research on LEO satellite networks and IPv6 deployments, highlighting practical insights for network operators and researchers alike.
Abstract
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks have attracted considerable attention for their ability to deliver global, low-latency broadband Internet services. In this paper, we present a large-scale measurement study of the Starlink network, the largest LEO satellite constellation to date. We first propose an efficient method for discovering active Starlink user routers, identifying approximately 5.98 million IPv6 addresses across 208 regions in 165 countries. Compared to general-purpose IPv6 target generation algorithms, our router-centric approach achieves near-complete coverage and, to the best of our knowledge, yields the most comprehensive known set of active IPv6 addresses for Starlink user routers. Based on the discovered user routers, we further propose an efficient method for mapping the Starlink backbone network and uncover a topology consisting of 49 Points of Presence (PoPs) interconnected by 98 links. We conduct a detailed statistical analysis of active Starlink user routers and PoPs, and further characterize the IPv6 address assignment strategy adopted by the Starlink network. Finally, we analyze the latency of Starlink user routers, propose a method to distinguish different types of users within the same region using outside-in measurement, and identify the ongoing V2 Mini satellite deployment as a potential driver of the performance improvements. The dataset of the Starlink backbone network is publicly available at https://ki3.org.cn/#/starlink-network.