Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues.

The theory enables

mathematical analysis of several related processes, including arriving at the (back of the) queue,
waiting in the queue (essentially a storage process), and being served at the front of the queue.
The theory permits the derivation and calculation of several performance measures including the
average waiting time in the queue or the system, the expected number waiting or receiving
service, and the probability of encountering the system in certain states, such as empty, full,
having an available server or having to wait a certain time to be served.

Queueing theory has applications in diverse fields, including telecommunications, traffic

engineering, computing and the design of factories, shops, offices and hospitals.

Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because the results are
often used when making business decisions about the resources needed to provide service. It is
applicable in a wide variety of situations that may be encountered in business, commerce,
industry, healthcare, public service and engineering. Applications are frequently encountered in
customer service situations as well as transport and telecommunication. Queueing theory is
directly applicable to intelligent transportation systems, call centers, networks,
telecommunications, server queueing, mainframe computer queueing of telecommunications
terminals, advanced telecommunications systems, and traffic flow.
Construction and analysis

Queueing models are generally constructed to represent the steady state of a queueing system,
that is, the typical, long run or average state of the system. As a consequence, these are stochastic
models that represent the probability that a queueing system will be found in a particular
configuration or state.

A general procedure for constructing and analysing such queueing models is:

1. Identify the parameters of the system, such as the arrival rate, service time, queue
capacity, and perhaps draw a diagram of the system.
2. Identify the system states. (A state will generally represent the integer number of
customers, people, jobs, calls, messages, etc. in the system and may or may not be
limited.)
3. Draw a state transition diagram that represents the possible system states and identify the
rates to enter and leave each state. This diagram is a representation of a Markov chain.
4. Because the state transition diagram represents the steady state situation between state
there is a balanced flow between states so the probabilities of being in adjacent states can
be related mathematically in terms of the arrival and service rates and state probabilities.
5. Express all the state probabilities in terms of the empty state probability, using the inter-
state transition relationships.
6. Determine the empty state probability by using the fact that all state probabilities always
sum to 1.

Whereas specific problems that have small finite state models can often be analysed numerically,
analysis of more general models, using calculus, yields useful formulae that can be applied to
whole classes of problems.

Single-server queue

Single-server queues are, perhaps, the most commonly encountered queueing situation in real
life. One encounters a queue with a single server in many situations, including business (e.g.
sales clerk), industry (e.g. a production line), transport (e.g. a queues that the customer can select
from.) Consequently, being able to model and analyse a single server queue's behaviour is a
particularly useful thing to do.

Poisson arrivals and service

M/M/1// represents a single server that has unlimited queue capacity and infinite calling
population, both arrivals and service are Poisson (or random) processes, meaning the statistical
distribution of both the inter-arrival times and the service times follow the exponential
distribution. Because of the mathematical nature of the exponential distribution, a number of
quite simple relationships are able to be derived for several performance measures based on
knowing the arrival rate and service rate.
This is fortunate because an M/M/1 queuing model can be used to approximate many queuing
situations.

Poisson arrivals and general service

M/G/1// represents a single server that has unlimited queue capacity and infinite calling
population, while the arrival is still Poisson process, meaning the statistical distribution of the
inter-arrival times still follow the exponential distribution, the distribution of the service time
does not. The distribution of the service time may follow any general statistical distribution, not
just exponential. Relationships are still able to be derived for a (limited) number of performance
measures if one knows the arrival rate and the mean and variance of the service rate. However
the derivations are generally more complex and difficult....

A number of special cases of M/G/1 provide specific solutions that give broad insights into the
best model to choose for specific queueing situations because they permit the comparison of
those solutions to the performance of an M/M/1 model.

Multiple-servers queue

Multiple (identical)-servers queue situations are frequently encountered in telecommunications

or a customer service environment. When modelling these situations care is needed to ensure that
it is a multiple servers queue, not a network of single server queues, because results may differ
depending on how the queuing model behaves.

One observational insight provided by comparing queuing models is that a single queue with
multiple servers performs better than each server having their own queue and that a single large
pool of servers performs better than two or more smaller pools, even though there are the same
total number of servers in the system.

One simple example to prove the above fact is as follows: Consider a system having 8 input
lines, single queue and 8 servers.The output line has a capacity of 64 kbit/s. Considering the
arrival rate at each input as 2 packets/s. So, the total arrival rate is 16 packets/s. With an average
of 2000 bits per packet, the service rate is 64 kbit/s/2000b = 32 packets/s. Hence, the average
response time of the system is 1/(μ − λ) = 1/(32 − 16) = 0.0625 sec. Now, consider a second
system with 8 queues, one for each server. Each of the 8 output lines has a capacity of 8 kbit/s.
The calculation yields the response time as 1/(μ − λ) = 1/(4 − 2) = 0.5 sec. And the average
waiting time in the queue in the first case is ρ/(1 − ρ)μ = 0.03125, while in the second case is
0.25.

Infinitely many servers

While never exactly encountered in reality, an infinite-servers (e.g. M/M/) model is a convenient
theoretical model for situations that involve storage or delay, such as parking lots, warehouses
and even atomic transitions. In these models there is no queue, as such, instead each arriving
customer receives service. When viewed from the outside, the model appears to delay or store
each customer for some time.