Bayesian inference and prediction for the GI/M/1 queueing system

This article undertake Bayesian inference and prediction for GI/M/1 queueing systems. A semiparametric model based on mixtures of Erlang distributions is considered to model the general interarrival time distribution. Given arrival and service data, a Bayesian procedure based on birth-death Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods is proposed. An estimation of the system parameters and predictive distributions of measures such as the stationary system size and waiting time is give

BAYESIAN CONTROL OF THE NUMBER OF SERVERS IN A GI/M/C QUEUING SYSTEM

In this paper we consider the problem of designing a GI/M/c queueing system. Given arrival and service data, our objective is to choose the optimal number of servers so as to minimize an expected cost function which depends on quantities, such as the number of customers in the queue. A semiparametric approach based on Erlang mixture distributions is used to model the general interarrival time distribution. Given the sample data, Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are used to estimate the system parameters and the predictive distributions of the usual performance measures. We can then use these estimates to minimize the steady-state expected total cost rate as a function of the control parameter c. We provide a numerical example based on real data obtained from a bank in Madrid.

Bayesian inference for queueing networks and modeling of internet services

Modern Internet services, such as those at Google, Yahoo!, and Amazon, handle billions of requests per day on clusters of thousands of computers. Because these services operate under strict performance requirements, a statistical understanding of their performance is of great practical interest. Such services are modeled by networks of queues, where each queue models one of the computers in the system. A key challenge is that the data are incomplete, because recording detailed information about every request to a heavily used system can require unacceptable overhead. In this paper we develop a Bayesian perspective on queueing models in which the arrival and departure times that are not observed are treated as latent variables. Underlying this viewpoint is the observation that a queueing model defines a deterministic transformation between the data and a set of independent variables called the service times. With this viewpoint in hand, we sample from the posterior distribution over missing data and model parameters using Markov chain Monte Carlo. We evaluate our framework on data from a benchmark Web application. We also present a simple technique for selection among nested queueing models. We are unaware of any previous work that considers inference in networks of queues in the presence of missing data.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS392 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Computationally Efficient Simulation of Queues: The R Package queuecomputer

Large networks of queueing systems model important real-world systems such as MapReduce clusters, web-servers, hospitals, call centers and airport passenger terminals. To model such systems accurately, we must infer queueing parameters from data. Unfortunately, for many queueing networks there is no clear way to proceed with parameter inference from data. Approximate Bayesian computation could offer a straightforward way to infer parameters for such networks if we could simulate data quickly enough. We present a computationally efficient method for simulating from a very general set of queueing networks with the R package queuecomputer. Remarkable speedups of more than 2 orders of magnitude are observed relative to the popular DES packages simmer and simpy. We replicate output from these packages to validate the package. The package is modular and integrates well with the popular R package dplyr. Complex queueing networks with tandem, parallel and fork/join topologies can easily be built with these two packages together. We show how to use this package with two examples: a call center and an airport terminal.Comment: Updated for queuecomputer_0.8.

Inference for double Pareto lognormal queues with applications

In this article we describe a method for carrying out Bayesian inference for the double Pareto lognormal (dPlN) distribution which has recently been proposed as a model for heavy-tailed phenomena. We apply our approach to inference for the dPlN/M/1 and M/dPlN/1 queueing systems. These systems cannot be analyzed using standard techniques due to the fact that the dPlN distribution does not posses a Laplace transform in closed form. This difficulty is overcome using some recent approximations for the Laplace transform for the Pareto/M/1 system. Our procedure is illustrated with applications in internet traffic analysis and risk theory

TRANSIENT BAYESIAN INFERENCE FOR SHORT AND LONG-TAILED GI/G/1 QUEUEING SYSTEMS

In this paper, we describe how to make Bayesian inference for the transient behaviour and busy period in a single server system with general and unknown distribution for the service and interarrival time. The dense family of Coxian distributions is used for the service and arrival process to the system. This distribution model is reparametrized such that it is possible to define a non-informative prior which allows for the approximation of heavytailed distributions. Reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are used to estimate the predictive distribution of the interarrival and service time. Our procedure for estimating the system measures is based in recent results for known parameters which are frequently implemented by using symbolical packages. Alternatively, we propose a simple numerical technique that can be performed for every MCMC iteration so that we can estimate interesting measures, such as the transient queue length distribution. We illustrate our approach with simulated and real queues.

Transient bayesian inference for short and long-tailed GI/G/1 queueing systems

In this paper, we describe how to make Bayesian inference for the transient behaviour and busy period in a single server system with general and unknown distribution for the service and interarrival time. The dense family of Coxian distributions is used for the service and arrival process to the system. This distribution model is reparametrized such that it is possible to define a non-informative prior which allows for the approximation of heavytailed distributions. Reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are used to estimate the predictive distribution of the interarrival and service time. Our procedure for estimating the system measures is based in recent results for known parameters which are frequently implemented by using symbolical packages. Alternatively, we propose a simple numerical technique that can be performed for every MCMC iteration so that we can estimate interesting measures, such as the transient queue length distribution. We illustrate our approach with simulated and real queues