Performance study of Markov modulated fluid flow models with priority traffic

Abstract

The steady-state performance of generic high-speed queuing system with priority traffic is studied, using the Markov modulated fluid models. the focus is on systems with traffic partitioned into two priorities according to a splitting factor alpha , so that low priority traffic can be discarded when congestion occurs. The results are used to further study issues of congestion control with priority traffic. In particular, the expected values, waiting times, variances of the buffer contents, and tail distributions are evaluated. It is found that the waiting time is more sensitive to changes of alpha than the buffer contents. This shows that for time-constrained traffic, the priority assignment is important for properly balancing the tradeoff between packet loss and delays. This model can be considered as a direct extension of the fluid-flow model to include priorities.<>