Measurement study: Characterizing and Measuring Starlink Internet Circumvention in Unlicensed Countries
Why am I receiving traffic from the Technical University of Munich?
You are likely seeing connection attempts from our scanning host. These scans are conducted for academic research only. We follow best practices, as laid out by the scientific community, such as Dittrich et al., and Partridge and Allman. If you have any inquires, please write an e-mail to the contact details provided below.
As part of a Master's thesis at the Technical University of Munich, we conduct a ZMap scan of Starlink IP addresses in AS14593 (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation). The purpose is to characterize and measure Starlink Internet connectivity in countries where the service is not officially licensed.
The IPv4 address ranges were retrieved on 9 August 2026 from the Starlink GeoIP dataset. The IPv6 targets were obtained by intersecting the IPv6 prefixes from that dataset with the list of responsive addresses from the IPv6 Hitlist.
We only collect information about your service as far as is publicly visible to anyone else on the Internet. We hope the data helps us understand the Starlink network and its role within the internet better. As an academic institution we intend to publish our findings, but we will never publish data which could clearly identify you or your company.
In recent years, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks have made an immense impact on global connectivity by providing internet access to remote regions. The largest provider of such services is SpaceX's Starlink, which is officially available in more than 150 countries and territories. However, despite being unlicensed or even prohibited in some countries, such as Sudan and Iran, verified reports indicate that use of the service is nevertheless possible. This thesis therefore looks into the availability and use of Starlink in unlicensed countries. By analyzing several network measurement datasets and conducting new measurements, such as this Zmap scan, the thesis examines where and how Starlink is used despite regulatory restrictions and whether Starlink traffic from these regions differs in a characteristic way from Starlink traffic observed in authorized countries.
More precisely, the Zmap scan is performed to analyze the responsiveness of Starlink IP addresses and check whether IP addresses assigned to certain regions respond more often than others.
We send connection attempts via Zmap to the following TCP/UDP ports:
| Port | Service |
|---|---|
| 22 | SSH |
| 25 | SMTP |
| 53 | DNS |
| 80 | HTTP |
| 88 | Kerberos |
| 110 | POP3 |
| 123 | NTP |
| 143 | IMAP |
| 443 | HTTPS |
| 3389 | RDP |
| 5900 | ARD / VNC |
| 8000 | HTTP (alternative) |
| 8080 | HTTP (alternative) / proxy service |
| 8443 | HTTPS (alternative) |
Traffic related to this study originates from the following system:
| Host | IPv4 address | IPv6 address |
|---|---|---|
| cmvm57.cit.tum.de | 131.159.25.183 | 2a09:80c0:24::1183 |
If you do not want to be part of this research, you can simply block connection attempts from our scanning systems or send us an e-mail and we will add you to our blacklist.
The contact informations are provided below.
If you have any inquiries about this study or wish to be excluded from it, please write to us:
Technische Universität München
Chair for Connected Mobility
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology
Boltzmannstraße 3
85748 Garching bei München
Germany
For more contact information on the Connected Mobility chair at TUM, please refer to the contact page of our chair.
This page provides information about an academic measurement study. Despite careful review we assume no liability for the content of external links; the operators of the linked pages are solely responsible for their content.