Characterisation of the output process of a discrete-time GI / D / 1 queue, and its application to network performance

Abstract

In this paper we use the burst factor of a packet stream, which is defined in a general setting, to quantify the long-term variability, or burstiness, of such a stream. We briefly review some existing results to show that this parameter plays an important role in the performance assessment and dimensioning of buffers in network nodes, even in a non-Markovian setting. We then focus on the calculation of this parameter at the egress of a discrete-time GI / D / 1 queueing system, considering different routing scenarios, and show how it can be expressed in terms of the parameters that characterise the arrival process in such a queue. In addition, we demonstrate how these results can be applied to evaluate the buffer performance in the subsequent nodes of a network. The analytic results that are derived throughout this paper are supported by simulations.