Chapter 4 Switching and Queuing Delay Models 241

Arrival Process / Service Proc. / Num. Servers / Max. Occupancy / User Population / Scheduling Discipline
1. Arrival Process (first symbol) indicates the statistical nature of the arrival process. The
letter M is used to denote pure random arrivals or pure random service times. It stands for
Markovian, a reference to the memoryless property of the exponential distribution of
interarrival times. In other words, the arrival process is a Poisson process. Commonly
used letters are:
M for exponential distribution of interarrival times
G for general independent distribution of interarrival times
D for deterministic (constant) interarrival times
2. Service Process (second symbol) indicates the nature of the probability distribution of the
service times. For example, M, G, and D stand for exponential, general, and deterministic
distributions, respectively. In all cases, successive interarrival times and service times are
assumed to be statistically independent of each other.
3. Number of Servers (third symbol) specifies the number of servers in the system.
4. Maximum Occupancy (fourth symbol) is a number that specifies the waiting room
capacity. Excess customers are blocked and not allowed into the system.
5. User Population (fifth symbol) is a number that specifies the total customer population
(the universe of customers)
6. Scheduling Discipline (sixth symbol) indicates how the arriving customers are scheduled
for service. Scheduling discipline is also called Service Discipline or Queuing Discipline.
Commonly used service disciplines are the following:
FCFS first-come-first-served, also called first-in-first-out (FIFO), where the first
customer that arrives in the system is the first customer to be served
LCFS last-come-first served (like a popup stack)
FIRO first-in-random-out
Service disciplines will be covered later in Chapter 5, where fair queuing (FQ) service discipline
will be introduced. Only the first three symbols are commonly used in specifying a queuing
model, although sometimes other symbols will be used in the rest of this chapter.

4.2.2 M / M / 1 Queuing System

Problems related to this section: Problem 4.16 Problem 4.20
A correct notation for the system we consider is M/M/1///FCFS. This system can hold
unlimited (infinite) number of customers, i.e., it has an unlimited waiting room size or the
maximum queue length; the total customer population is unlimited; and, the customers are served
in the FCFS order. It is common to omit the last three items and simply use M/M/1.