Switched Ethernet Networking over LEO Satellite

Satellite onboard switching capabilities, and their possibility to enable "over-the-air" networks, is a strongly innovative achievement of modern satellite communication. The exploitation of satellite networking is especially relevant in the case of Low Earth Orbit satellites (LEO), where the reduced latency makes a LEO mesh network highly appealing and competitive with terrestrial solutions also in terms of performance. However, while the idea of a LEO mesh network is well understood, we are far from an ultimate answer on which is the best and more appropriate networking solution for moving LEO satellite network nodes. This paper promotes the adoption of existing layer-2 networking solutions over LEO networks. We believe that LEO networking may leverage from already existing and well understood layer-2 switching mechanisms, thus allowing, on one side, onboard deployment of switching fabrics and solutions already developed for terrestrial networks, and, on the other side, seamless interoperation with terrestrial networks. Specifically, as technical contribution of this paper, we show how 802.1Q switching solutions (i.e. Ethernet Virtual LAN switching) may be adapted, with limited modification effort, to operate in a LEO scenario. Moreover, we propose an innovative approach for frame routing over a mesh of multiple spanning trees (802.1s), especially devised to dramatically enhance the performance of legacy 802.1Q solutions in the presence of moving LEO nodes.