Approximate analysis of finite fork/join queueing networks

We perform an approximate analysis on the finite-buffered acyclic fork/join queueing networks under the “blocking before service” mechanism. This study, besides being able to handle a network with complex topology and with finite buffers, is more general than the existing ones of its kind in that two performance measures, the system throughput and the average number of customers in each buffer, are taken into account. For a simple two-sibling network, we propose in detail a decomposition algorithm in which each decomposed subsystem carries over the local fork/join/tandem structure. The extension of this algorithm to a more general system is also discussed. Experimental results are provided showing that the proposed algorithm yields accurate results on the two performance measures.