Computer Networks and Systems

Statistical performance evaluation has assumed an increasing amount of importance as we seek to design more and more sophisticated communication and information processing systems. The ability to predict a proposed system's per- formance before one constructs it is an extremely cost effective design tool. This book is meant to be a first-year graduate level introduction to the field of statistical performance evaluation. It is intended for people who work with sta- tistical performance evaluation including engineers, computer scientists and applied mathematicians. As such, it covers continuous time queueing theory (chapters 1-4), stochastic Petri networks (chapter 5), discrete time queueing theory (chapter 6) and recent network traffic modeling work (chapter 7). There is a short appendix at the end of the book that reviews basic probability theory. This material can be taught as a complete semester long course in performance evalua- tion or queueing theory. Alternatively, one may teach only chapters 2 and 6 in the first half of an introductory computer networking course, as is done at Stony Brook. The second half of the course could use a more protocol oriented text such as ones by Saadawi [SAAD] or Stallings [STALl What is new in the third edition of this book? In addition to the well received material of the second edition, this edition has three major new features.