Seminar Details
2026-10-22 (13:00) : ANTS: Agnostic Network Transit for Space
At Nyquist Room - Maxwell a.164
Duration: 60 minutes
Organized by Computer Science and Engineering
Section 1: ANTS: Agnostic Network Transit for Space
Speaker :
Johann Hugon (ICTEAM-INGI)
Abstract :
"Satellite communications (SatCom) have the potential to bring global connectivity, resilience, and coverage to new levels.
Yet despite rapid deployment by operators like Starlink and IRIS², current constellations primarily operate as access networks, underutilizing their capacity for long-range transit.
While the industry is converging on the need for this transition, naively treating SatCom as a terrestrial Autonomous System risks destabilizing the global Internet due to routing instability and protocol ossification.
To address these challenges, this project introduces ANTS (Agnostic Network Transit for Space), a framework designed to treat SatCom as a distinct network class.
ANTS aims to design and validate architecture-agnostic interfacing protocols that facilitate seamless space–terrestrial interoperability and direct inter-constellation communication.
By defining these standards before network architectures ossifying, ANTS seeks to enable efficient, resilient satellite transit layers that are fully integrated with the terrestrial Internet ecosystem."
Section 2: Using Idle Inter-Satellite Links for Network Transit
Speaker :
Alice Burlat (ICTEAM-INGI)
Abstract :
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb are being deployed at a fast pace. Today they serve mainly as access networks. They follow a bent-pipe model in which each user's traffic is relayed to a nearby ground station and handed off to the terrestrial Internet. Operators have recently started equiping their satellites with laser terminals, which create Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs) that can route traffic across the whole constellation. Because demand follows where users live, most of this in-orbit capacity sits unused, especially over the oceans, where few users are located. Intercontinental traffic, meanwhile, still depends almost entirely on submarine fiber cables. These cables are costly to deploy and repair, and they are exposed to natural disasters and deliberate attacks. We argue that the idle ISLs can be used as a transit network that carries traffic between Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) on different continents, alongside the existing access service and explore how much traffic current LEO constellations could carry in this role.