Marshall Eubanks writes:
In a typical flight Europe / China I believe that there would be order 10-15 satellite transponder / ground station changes. The satellite footprints count for more that the geography.
What I remember from the Connexion presentations is that they used only four ground stations to cover more or less the entire Northern hemisphere. I think the places were something like Lenk (Switzerland), Moscow, Tokyo, and somewhere in the Central U.S.. So a Europe->China flight should involve just one or two handoffs (Switzerland->Moscow(->Tokyo?)). Each ground station has a different ISP, and the airplane's /24 is re-announced from a different origin AS after the handoff. It's possible that there are additional satellite/transponder changes, but those wouldn't be visible in BGP. -- Simon.