Starlink on the Road: A First Look at Mobile Starlink Performance in Central Europe

Low Earth Orbit Satellite Networks such as Starlink promise to provide world-wide Internet access.

While traditionally designed for stationary use, a new dish, released in April 2023 in Europe, provides mobile Internet access including in-motion usage, e.g., while mounted on a car.

In this paper, we design and build a mobile measurement setup.

Our goal is to fully autonomously conduct continuous Starlink measurements while the car is in motion.

We share our practical experiences, including challenges regarding the permanent power supply.

We measure the Starlink performance over the span of two months from mid-January to mid-March 2024 when the car is in motion.

The measurements consist of all relevant network parameters, such as the download and upload throughput, the RTT, and packet loss, as well as detailed power consumption data.

We analyze our dataset to assess Starlink's mobile performance in Central Europe, Germany, and compare it to stationary measurements in proximity.

We find that the mobile performance is significantly worse than stationary performance.

The power consumption of the new dish is higher, but seems to be more correlated to the heating function of the dish than to the speed of the vehicle.

;Comment: This work has been submitted to the 2024 Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA) for possible publication.

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