Effect of payload size on mean response time when message segmentations occur: Case of burst packet arrival

This paper investigates the effect of payload size on mean response time for communication networks where message segmentations occur and segmented packets within a message arrival over a physical link in bursts. To achieve this, we develop an MX/G/1 queue that represents multiple segmented packets per arrival and a correlated packet size sequence within a message, given a payload size and a message-size distribution. From numerical results, we show that the curves of the mean response time for a packet in the case of low offered load conditions are concave in payload sizes for an actual scenario where Web objects are delivered over a physical link. In addition, we derive the analytical form of a payload size yielding the minimum response time in the case of no offered load conditions when message sizes are exponentially distributed, which is approximately given by √2 ℓ(m) ℓ(h)/3 where ℓ(m) is the mean message size and ℓ(h) is the header/trailer size.