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arXiv · 2603.08990

Edge-Side Fingerprints of Service Tiering and Quota Throttling in Starlink

Houtianfu Wang·Hanlin Cai·Haofan Dong·Ozgur B. Akan
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Abstract

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.

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Houtianfu Wang, Hanlin Cai, Haofan Dong, Ozgur B. Akan. 2026-03-09. Edge-Side Fingerprints of Service Tiering and Quota Throttling in Starlink. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08990

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