6. Stochastic Processes and Queueing Theory
6.1. Overview
Queues arise naturally when entities demanding service, or customers, interact asynchronously with entities providing service, or servers. Service requests may arrive at a server when it is either unavailable or busy serving other requests. In such cases, service demands must be either queued or dropped. A server that queues demands instead of dropping them can smooth over fluctuations in the rate of service and in the rate of request arrivals, leading to the formation of a queueing system. The study of the probabilistic behavior of such systems is the subject of queueing theory.
Here are some examples of queueing systems.
1. The arrival and service of packets at the output queue of a ...
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