An Introduction to the RESearch Queueing Package for Modeling Computer Systems and Communication Networks

A queueing network is an important tool for modeling systems where performance is principally affected by contention for resources. Such systems include computer systems, communication networks and manufacturing lines. In order to effectively use queuing networks as performance models, appropriate software is necessary for definition ofthe networks to be solved, for solution ofthe networks and for examination of the performance measures obtained. The RESearch Queueing Package (RESQ) and the RESearch Queueing Package Modeling Environment (RESQME) form a system for constructing, solving and analyzing extended queueing network models. We refer to the class of RESQ networks as extended because of characteristics which allow effective representation of system detail. RESQ incorporates a high level language to concisely describe the structure of the model and to specify constraints on the solution. A main feature of the language is the capability to describe models in a hierarchical fashion, allowing an analyst to define submodels to be used analogously to use of macros in programming languages. RESQ also provides a variety of methods for estimating the accuracy of simulation results and for determining simulation run lengths. RESQME is a graphical interface for RESQ. In this introduction, we limit our examples to computer systems and communication networks. Acknowledgement: The authors wish to thank their co-developers of RESQME: Jim Kurose and Kurt Gordon. We also want to thank Ben Antanaitis, Howard Jachter, Jack Servier, Daniel Souday and Peter Welch for their many suggestions which helped improve the RESQME package and Anil Aggarwal, Al Blum, Gary Burkland, Rocky Chang, Janet Chen, Diana Coles, Prakash Deka, Paul Lnewner, and Geoff Parker for their work in implementing RESQME. We would also like to thank our users for their ideas and feedback that we tried to incorporate in RESQ and RESQME. We remain indebted to Charlie Sauer for his design, guidance, inspiration, and development ofthe RESQ languag