Mastering the LEO Handover: How Eutelsat OneWeb Eliminated Micro-Outages and Achieved Zero Downtime

The satellite connectivity landscape is undergoing a tectonic shift. As enterprises, governments, and telcos demand fiber-like performance from space, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations have become the new frontier. However, delivering seamless, carrier-grade connectivity from platforms hurtling through space presents unprecedented engineering and operational challenges.

For the modern telecom leader, whether a CEO focused on strategic market advantage and proactive customer experience, or a CTO laser-focused on network architecture, protocol efficiency, and cloud security, the mandate is the same: the network must be invisible, infallible, and instant.

To understand the evolution of satellite network monitoring, let’s have a look at how Eutelsat OneWeb – the world’s first fully integrated GEO-LEO operator – and active monitoring experts Creanord collaborate together on modernizing satellite service assurance.

The LEO Challenge: Catching a Satellite at 27,000 km/h

Delivering broadband from LEO is fundamentally different from traditional Geostationary (GEO) operations. Eutelsat OneWeb’s LEO satellites orbit the earth, moving at a staggering 27,000 km/h. For a user terminal on the ground, a single satellite is only visible for about two minutes.

This extreme physics requires continuous, ultra-fast link transitions and handovers. To the end-user, these handovers must be imperceptible. To the network architect, they represent brief windows of vulnerability where micro-outages, latency spikes, and packet loss can degrade the service experience. Monitoring this environment requires a paradigm shift; traditional polling intervals are simply too slow to catch issues that happen in the blink of an eye.

The Legacy Failure: Operating in the Blind Spot

Before upgrading its monitoring infrastructure, Eutelsat OneWeb faced a critical bottleneck with its legacy network monitoring solution. It was fundamentally unsuited for the dynamic nature of a LEO constellation:

• Blind to Micro-Outages: The system could not poll the network fast enough, meaning micro-outages during handovers went entirely undetected.
• Operational Instability: Lack of scalability led to the monitoring system crashing on a monthly basis, blinding the operations team.
• Security and Compliance Risks: The legacy solution ran on a vendor-controlled cloud, presenting unacceptable data governance and security risks for an operator handling sensitive global traffic.

The Technical Solution: Precision, Security, and Speed

To solve this, Eutelsat OneWeb revolutionized its Performance Hub by partnering with Creanord to deploy the PULSure platform.

On the technical side, the architectural improvements were immediate and profound. Instead of relying on an opaque vendor cloud, Eutelsat OneWeb deployed Creanord’s PULSensor virtual probes and PULScore analytics directly within their own highly secure, self-managed cloud environment. This move instantly resolved data sovereignty concerns and provided ultimate architectural control.

Ultra-Granular Visibility with TWAMP

The true breakthrough, however, was in the granularity of the data. Eutelsat OneWeb uses TWAMP (Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol) as the gold standard for active performance monitoring.

To eliminate the micro-outage blind spots, Creanord configured the probes to send 5 packets per second (one every 200ms), combined with incredibly granular 1-second reporting on latency, packet loss, and jitter. Network engineers could suddenly see the microscopic health of every LEO link handover in near real-time.

Real-Time Streaming via Kafka

Data is only as good as the speed at which it can be actioned. The architecture utilizes Kafka data feeds to stream this ultra-granular performance data directly into Eutelsat OneWeb’s front-end applications. This enables automated alarms, real-time visibility, and immediate correlation of network events, bridging the gap between raw telemetry and actionable intelligence.

The Business Outcomes: A Strategic Edge

For the business owner, the technical triumphs of the Creanord deployment translated directly into powerful business outcomes and competitive advantages:

• Zero Downtime Achieved: The transition eliminated the monthly legacy probe crashes. The monitoring system is now highly available, ensuring continuous service assurance.
• Proactive Customer Experience: By capturing micro-outages and utilizing real-time Kafka streams, the operations team transitioned from reactive firefighting to proactive issue resolution. Problems are now identified and fixed before the customer even notices a degradation in service.
• Rapid Global Deployment: Time-to-market is critical in the LEO space. The Creanord solution was fully deployed across all global Points of Presence (PoPs) in under one month.
• Operational Efficiency: The highly intuitive UI/UX of the PULSure platform eliminated the need for complex, time-consuming engineering training, allowing the NOC (Network Operations Center) to realize value on day one.

The Takeaway: The Eutelsat OneWeb and Creanord partnership proves that the future of LEO satellite connectivity relies on bridging the gap between extreme aerospace physics and hyper-granular, cloud-native network analytics. To deliver continuous, fiber-like performance from space, operators must abandon legacy polling intervals and embrace high-frequency, secure, and automated monitoring. In the race to connect the globe, those who can see the micro-outages are the ones who will deliver the macro results.

For further insights, refer to the YouTube video with Miguel Morgado from Eutelsat OneWeb at: