Optimum speed of service in the design of customer data communications systems

Abstract

A model is given for selection of optimum bit speed for private line data communications applications based on the tradeoff between the cost of delay and the cost of equipment. Costs of delay are those costs incurred by the communications user which occur outside the communications system as a result of delays introduced by that system. The delays considered result from transmission delay and customer's queuing delay. The model assumes Poisson input, exponentially distributed message lengths, and k servers. A method for including the effect of error control is given. The bit speed selection model is applied to an information retrieval application.