Load Balancing Based Traffic Re-Routing During DDoS Attacks in Satellite Constellation Networks

Kurzfassung

Satellite Constellation Networks represent an emerging field with increasing adoption every year, due to their ability to transfer data with low latency between most remote locations on Earth. Due to their network topology, these networks are particularly vulnerable to Link Flooding Attacks such as Coremelt and Crossfire. Mitigation strategies, such as Load Balancing (LB), distribute traffic across multiple paths. However, the effectiveness of these approaches in multi-layer satellite networks at the scale of contemporary networks such as Starlink remains insufficiently explored. A discrete event-based simulator was developed using the network simulator ns- 3 to model a satellite constellation network with two layers in low and medium Earth orbit. Segment routing is implemented with Multi-Protocol Label Switching. Different variants of LB are tested against Link Flooding Attacks of varying sizes to assess their differing impacts on end users and the network. It is found that LB improves the network resilience against these attacks and reduces the delay impact on traffic up to 98 %. Dynamic LB is more effective than static LB, as long as network resources to reroute traffic over are provided, such as additional medium Earth orbit satellites. While LB provides effective mitigation for smaller-scale attacks, larger attacks cannot be addressed solely by LB and require additional methods or network scaling. The developed simulator can be reused to evaluate other mitigation strategies in future studies.