Chapter 4 Switching and Queuing Delay Models 237

System

Queue Server
Departing
Arriving packets Queued packets Serviced packet packets

Source
Source

Arrival rate Service rate

= packets per second = packets per second

Figure 4-16: Simple queuing system with a single server.

Total delay of customer i = Waiting + Service time

Ti = W i + Xi

Server
Service rate
Arrival rate
customers
customers unit of time
NQ
unit of time Customers in queue
Customer
in service
N
Customers in system

Figure 4-17: Illustration of queuing system parameters.

Average arrival rate Maximum service rate

Otherwise, the queue length would grow unlimited and the system would become meaningless
because some customers would have to wait infinite amount of time to be serviced. A corollary of
this requirement is that queuing is an artifact of irregular customer arrival patterns, sometimes
being too many, sometimes very few. Customers arriving in groups create queues. Had they been
arriving individually (well spaced), allowing the server enough time to process the previous
one, there would be no queuing. The arrival pattern where the actual arrival rate is equal to the
average one would incur no queuing delays on any customer.
This is illustrated in Figure 4-18 where we consider a bank teller that can service five customers
customers
per hour, = 5 , on average. This means, serving one customer takes 12 minutes, on
hour
average. Assume that for a stretch of time all arriving customers take 12 minutes to be served and
that three customers arrive as shown in the figure. Although the server capacity is greater than the
arrival rate, the second and third customers still need to wait in line before being served, because
their arrivals are too closely spaced. If the customers arrived spaced according to their departure
times at the same server, there would be no queuing delay for any customer. However, if this