Praise for the Third Edition: "This is one of the best books available. Its excellent organizational structure allows quick reference to specific models and its clear presentation . . . solidifies the understanding of the concepts being presented."IIE Transactions on Operations EngineeringThoroughly revised and expanded to reflect the latest developments in the field, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition continues to present the basic statistical principles that are necessary to analyze the probabilistic nature of queues. Rather than presenting a narrow focus on the subject, this update illustrates the wide-reaching, fundamental concepts in queueing theory and its applications to diverse areas such as computer science, engineering, business, and operations research.This update takes a numerical approach to understanding and making probable estimations relating to queues, with a comprehensive outline of simple and more advanced queueing models. Newly featured topics of the Fourth Edition include:Retrial queuesApproximations for queueing networksNumerical inversion of transformsDetermining the appropriate number of servers to balance quality and cost of serviceEach chapter provides a self-contained presentation of key concepts and formulae, allowing readers to work with each section independently, while a summary table at the end of the book outlines the types of queues that have been discussed and their results. In addition, two new appendices have been added, discussing transforms and generating functions as well as the fundamentals of differential and difference equations. New examples are now included along with problems that incorporate QtsPlus software, which is freely available via the book's related Web site.With its accessible style and wealth of real-world examples, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition is an ideal book for courses on queueing theory at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners who analyze congestion in the fields of telecommunications, transportation, aviation, and management science.

Fundamentals of Queueing Theory

Wireless networks are passing through a transition phase for the past few years now and this transition is giving a way towards the convergence of all IP-based networks to form the Next Generation Networks (NGNs). With the proliferation of these networks in daily life, users' needs are also increasing and service operators are offering different services to satisfy their customers for a better grade of service and an elevated quality of experience (QoE). However, a single operator cannot fulfill the huge demands of the users especially, if a user is nomadic. In nomadism, a user traverses number of available networks that might contain cellular or wireless data networks, usually known as heterogeneous wireless networks. These networks offer various services from email to live video streaming depending upon their capacity and nature. During this traversing procedure, a user switches among different networks to satisfy his/her needs in terms of quality of service. This process is commonly known as a vertical handover or handoff (VHO) due to the involvement of heterogeneous wireless networks in it. An extensive work has been carried out in this field in order to fulfill user demands for better QoS and QoE. In this paper, we give a detailed state-of-the-art of these existing vertical handover decision mechanisms that aim at providing ubiquitous connectivity to the mobile users. We have categorized these vertical handover measurement and decision schemes on the basis of their employed techniques and parameters. Also, we present a comprehensive summary of their advantages and drawbacks. This paper gives its readers an overview of the active research initiatives in the area of handover decision making process in heterogeneous wireless networks and identifies the challenges behind the seamless services provisioning during mobility.

Enabling Vertical Handover Decisions in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: A State-of-the-Art and A Classification

With the proliferation of mobile demands and increasingly multifarious services and applications, mobile Internet has been an irreversible trend. Unfortunately, the current mobile and wireless network (MWN) faces a series of pressing challenges caused by the inherent design. In this paper, we extend two latest and promising innovations of Internet, software-defined networking and network virtualization, to mobile and wireless scenarios. We first describe the challenges and expectations of MWN, and analyze the opportunities provided by the software-defined wireless network (SDWN) and wireless network virtualization (WNV). Then, this paper focuses on SDWN and WNV by presenting the main ideas, advantages, ongoing researches and key technologies, and open issues respectively. Moreover, we interpret that these two technologies highly complement each other, and further investigate efficient joint design between them. This paper confirms that SDWN and WNV may efficiently address the crucial challenges of MWN and significantly benefit the future mobile and wireless network.

/pdf/software-defined-and-virtualized-future-mobile-and-wireless-1sdgub2n5j.pdf

Software-Defined and Virtualized Future Mobile and Wireless Networks: A Survey

With the move towards converged all-IP wireless network environments, managing end-user Quality of Experience (QoE) poses a challenging task, aimed at meeting high user expectations and requirements regarding reliable and cost-effective communication, access to any service, anytime and anywhere, and across multiple operator domains. In this paper, we give a survey of state-of-the-art research activities addressing the field of QoE management, focusing in particular on the domain of wireless networks and addressing three management aspects: QoE modeling, monitoring and measurement, and adaptation and optimization. Furthermore, we identify and discuss the key aspects and challenges that need to be considered when conducting research in this area.

/pdf/survey-and-challenges-of-qoe-management-issues-in-wireless-5gfqoab0k4.pdf

Survey and Challenges of QoE Management Issues in Wireless Networks

Quality-of-service (QoS) is a desirable feature for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) due to the growth of multimedia applications. However, the mobile nature and dynamic topology of MANETs make it difficult to provide QoS assurance in such networks. In this paper we propose a QoS routing protocol based on AODV (QS-AODV), which creates routes according to application QoS requirements. A local repair mechanism is used to improve the packet delivery ratio. It is shown that QS-AODV provides performance comparable to AODV under light traffic conditions. In heavy traffic, QS-AODV provides higher packet delivery ratios and lower routing overheads, at a cost of slightly longer end-to-end delays. The effects of mobility on performance is also presented.

https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/bitstream/handle/1828/623/zhang_2005.pdf?sequence=1

Quality of service for ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing

This article provides an overview of commonly used terminology related to quality of service assurance in IP networks. Several approaches to QoS definition, including those of IETF, ITU, and ETSI, are presented and compared. Terms associated with QoS like class of service, grade of service, service level agreement, as well as service level specification (SLS), traffic conditioning agreement (TCA), and traffic conditioning specification (TCS) are discussed. Terminology used in two QoS architectures, IntServ and DiffServ, is also introduced.

Quality of service terminology in IP networks

The article puts in order notions related to Quality of Service that are found in documents on service requirements. Apart from presenting a detailed description of QoS itself, it overviews classes of service (CoS) proposed by main standardization bodies and maps them across various transmission technologies. Standards and concepts related to less commonly used, though not less important, terms such as Grade of Service (GoS), Quality of Resilience (QoR), and Quality of Experience (QoE) are also discussed. While provisioning of QoS, CoS, GoS, and QoR is related to various aspects of networking and network performance, QoE describes resulting service features as perceived by the customer. Relations between those intrinsic network features and resulting human-experienced quality are discussed. The above set of QoX terms (where X stands for Service, Experience, etc.) is sufficient to describe and distinguish all aspects of service provisioning.

QoX: What is it really?

A survey of QoE assurance in converged networks

A survey on methods to provide multipath transmission in wired packet networks

Peer-to-peer (P2P) content distribution systems are a major source of traffic in the Internet, but the application layer protocols they use are mostly unaware of the underlying network in accordance with the layered structure of the Internet's protocol stack. Nevertheless, the need for improved network efficiency and the business interests of Internet service providers (ISPs) are both strong drivers toward a cross-layer approach in peer-to-peer protocol design, calling for P2P systems that would in some way interact with the ISPs. Recent research shows that the interaction, which can rely on information provided by both parties, can be mutually beneficial. In this article we first give an overview of the kinds of information that could potentially be exchanged between the P2P systems and the ISPs, and discuss their usefulness and the ease of obtaining and exchanging them. We also present a classification of the possible approaches for interaction based on the level of involvement of the ISPs and the P2P systems, and we discuss the potential strengths and the weaknesses of these approaches.

/pdf/interaction-patterns-between-p2p-content-distribution-pid4bm3tsg.pdf

Rafal Stankiewicz

Papers

Quality of service terminology in IP networks

QoX: What is it really?

A survey of QoE assurance in converged networks

A survey on methods to provide multipath transmission in wired packet networks

Interaction patterns between P2P content distribution systems and ISPs