Paving the Way for Link-State Routing in Satellite Networks with Fast and Seamless Ground Station Handovers

Proceedings of the ACM on Networking, 4(CoNEXT4) · 2026

Abstract

Satellite-based Internet access has mainly offered a bent-pipe model in which satellites relay packets between user terminals and ground stations strictly within reach. New constellations are now leveraging optical inter-satellite links to turn the constellation itself into a network by connecting satellites to their neighbours and providing Internet access through a set of ground stations reachable from the whole constellation. Operators deploying these networks aim to reuse existing IP technologies as much as possible. Satellite constellations are characterised by frequent connectivity changes between ground stations and satellites. Existing IP link-state routing protocols are known to trigger transient forwarding instabilities upon topological changes. In this paper, we explore how link-state routing protocols like IS-IS and OSPF can operate in such constellations. We discuss the convergence of link-state routing protocols during connectivity changes between ground stations and satellites, and show that they can cause transient loops. Given the frequency of these changes, they would affect network availability. We propose an efficient method that leverages multicast trees to perform such topology changes in a seamless manner and prove the correctness of our approach.

People

Nicolas Rybowski

Tom Rousseaux

Maxime Piraux

Cristel Pelsser

Olivier Bonaventure

Cite (BibTeX)

@article{Rybowski2026,
    title        = {Paving the Way for Link-State Routing in Satellite Networks with Fast and Seamless Ground Station Handovers},
    author       = {Nicolas Rybowski and Tom Rousseaux and Maxime Piraux and Cristel Pelsser and Olivier Bonaventure},
    year         = 2026,
    month        = dec,
    journal      = {Proceedings of the ACM on Networking},
    publisher    = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    address      = {New York, NY, USA},
    location     = {Utrecht, Netherlands},
    volume       = 4,
    number       = {CoNEXT4},
    articleno    = 58,
    numpages     = 27,
    doi          = {10.1145/3856972},
    issn         = {2834-5509},
    url          = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3856972},
    groups       = {International Journals and Magazines},
    issue_date   = {December 2026},
    keywords     = {OSPF, IS-IS, Network Stability, Satellite Constellation, Ground Station Handover},
}