Transient and stationary characteristics of a packet buffer modelled as an MAP/SM/1/b system

A packet buffer limited to a fixed number of packets (regardless of their lengths) is considered. The buffer is described as a finite FIFO queuing system fed by a Markovian Arrival Process (MAP) with service times forming a Semi-Markov (SM) process (MAP /SM /1/b in Kendall’s notation). Such assumptions allow us to obtain new analytical results for the queuing characteristics of the buffer. In the paper, the following are considered: the time to fill the buffer, the local loss intensity, the loss ratio, and the total number of losses in a given time interval. Predictions of the proposed model are much closer to the trace-driven simulation results compared with the prediction of the MAP /G/1/b model.