Mean value techniques

This chapter presents the technique to determine mean performance characteristics of queueing models, generally known as mean value analysis (MVA). The term MVA is usually associated with queueing networks (QNs). However, the MVA techniqueis also very powerful when studying single-station queueing models. The merits of MVA are in its intrinsic simplicity and its intuitively appealing derivation based on probabilistic arguments. The intuition of MVA can also be used to develop approximations for problems where an exact analysis appears to be intractable