The stability of a system of queues in series

Abstract

1. Introduction. The stability of a system of queues in series was investigated in (1) but the results obtained were not quite complete, for the situation in which all component queues are substable and at least one is critical was scarcely touched upon. The only reference to this situation, in fact, was an example on page 513 showing that necessary and sufficient conditions are not obvious. (The ideas and terminology of (1) will be used freely throughout this paper.)