On applying stochastic network calculus

Abstract

Performance evaluation plays a crucial role in the design of network systems. Many theoretical tools, including queueing theory, effective bandwidth and network calculus, have been proposed to providemodeling mechanisms and results. While these theories have been widely adopted for performance evaluation, each has its own limitation. With that network systems have become more complex and harder to describe, where a lot of uncertainty and randomness exists, to make performance evaluation of such systems tractable, some compromise is often necessary and helpful. Stochastic network calculus (SNC) is such a theoretical tool. While SNC is a relatively new theory, it is gaining increasing interest and popularity. In the current SNC literature, much attention has been paid on the development of the theory itself. In addition, researchers have also started applying SNC to performance analysis of various types of systems in recent years. The aim of this paper is to provide a tutorial on the new theoretical tool. Specifically, various SNC traffic models and SNC server models are reviewed. The focus is on how to apply SNC, for which, four critical steps are formalized and discussed. In addition, a list of SNC application topics/areas, where there may exist huge research potential, is presented.