Abstract.

Traffic flows with long-range dependence satisfy a certain type of scaling relationship, and it is this scaling relationship which governs the scaling behaviour of a queueing network fed by such flows. In this paper we present a mathematical technique for reasoning about scaling behaviour in queueing systems, based on large deviations theory. Our technique makes it straightforward to calculate the impact of long-range dependent traffic on tandem queues, priority queues, and many other systems.