Approximating response time distributions

Abstract

The response time is the most visible performance index to users of computer systems. End-users see individual response times, not the average. Therefore the distribution of response times is important in performance evaluation and capacity planning studies. However, the analytic results cannot be obtained in practical cases. A new queueing method is proposed to approximate the response-time distribution. Unlike the previous methods the proposed one takes into account the service-time distributions and routing behaviour. The reported results indicate that the method provides reasonable approximations in many cases.