Edge-Side Fingerprints of Service Tiering and Quota Throttling in Starlink
This work provides a method for users to audit network neutrality and service differentiation in low-Earth orbit satellite internet, addressing a gap in transparency for Starlink's traffic management.
The authors design an edge-side measurement procedure to audit service tiering and quota throttling in Starlink, identifying distinct signatures for priority, post-quota throttling, stay-active, and residential service regimes. They achieve high-speed vs. low-rate separation on a 232.8-hour trace using a lightweight rule on windowed medians.
We design and evaluate an edge-side measurement procedure for auditing service tiering and quota-based throttling in Starlink. Using a 232.8-hour plan-hopping campaign on a UK residential terminal, we align 1 Hz terminal telemetry with host-side probes to obtain portal-labeled traces spanning priority, post-quota throttling, stay-active operation, and residential service. These regimes manifest as distinct signatures in goodput, PoP RTT, and an internal-to-user ratio \(R=C_{\mathrm{int}}/T_{\mathrm{user}}\). We further show that high-speed \(R\) is stable over 30-minute sub-windows, that low-rate clusters have no aligned persistent obstruction or PoP-loss signature, and that clean high-speed dips do not move \(R\) into the low-rate band. A lightweight rule on windowed medians separates high-speed from low-rate operation on this trace without operator visibility.