State the problem the way a network engineer would: a non-geostationary constellation is a network whose topology never stops moving, because the satellites are constantly rising, setting, and handing off. Delivering consistent quality of service across that churning fabric is a hard traffic-engineering problem, and it is the difference between a link that feels like the internet and one that does not.
Lockheed's grant US11601191B2 (inventors Dilip Shyamsundar Gokhale, Anshul Deepak Kantawala, and Piya Seth Bhaskar), classified in H04B 7/18513 (satellite-communications routing) with H04L 47/34 and H04W 28/10 (flow and congestion control), claims information-rate and QoS configurations for end-to-end flows. The presence of terrestrial-style flow-control CPC codes signals that this is networking, not just RF.
The mechanism is end-to-end management across a non-geostationary mesh: setting and enforcing data rates and service levels for a flow as it traverses multiple satellites and inter-satellite links, so the experience stays within target even as the path changes underneath it. The interesting claims are about maintaining guarantees across handoffs.
This is the layer the public never sees and increasingly pays for. As constellations carry enterprise, government, and consumer traffic with different service requirements, the ability to differentiate and guarantee QoS becomes a commercial product in itself. Follow the appropriation of capability: a prime patenting QoS management signals where the recurring-revenue value is moving.
The caveat is that QoS guarantees are only as good as the underlying links and the system's ability to predict and route around the moving topology. The patent describes the management framework; whether the constellation can actually hold the guarantees under load is settled by the deployed network, not by the claim set.