ABSTRACT
Since the economical and social impact of congestion can be consider able, the importance of analysing queueing systems has been clear ever since the pioneering work of Erlang on telecommunications at the beginning of the century. Queues possess for mathematicians an added bonus, namely that the mathematics involved can be hard and intriguing, and they have an enormous potential for varying the conditions and assumptions of the sys tem. It does not come as a surprise that queues developed quickly into the huge area that it is today. Many papers, journals, meetings, and books are entirely devoted to the subject. We cannot possibly list here even all of the key references, and content ourselves with giving a small selection for the
interested reader. Among the numerous books, it is worth mentioning the general books of Cox and Smith (1961), Takacs (1962), Cooper (1981), Gross and Harris (1985), Medhi (1991), and Nelson (1995); Kleinrock (1975, 1976) and Newell (1982) are good sources of applications; Cooper (1990) is a nice survey with an extensive bibliography. Nevertheless, there is a plethora of survey books and papers on queueing, and Prabhu (1987) is a useful up-to-date survey.
