Analyzing a degenerate buffer with general inter-arrival and service times in discrete time

In novel switching approaches such as Optical Burst Switching, the involved buffers can only provide a degenerate waiting room, with delays restricted to multiples of a basic value, the granularity. Although the resulting performance loss was already studied analytically, previous work is either limited by the assumption of independent arrivals, or it involves a matrix with size growing fast with buffer size or arrival process complexity. Overcoming this, we developed a generic and accurate loss performance model for a degenerate GI/G/1 buffer in discrete time, that yields results instantly for any constellation of burst sizes, inter-arrival times, granularity, load and buffer size. This article is a postprint of W. Rogiest, K. Laevens, J. Walraevens and H. Bruneel, Analyzing a Degenerate Buffer with General Inter-Arrival and Service Times in Discrete Time, Queueing Systems 56 Vol. 3-4 (2007), pp.203-212.