Comparing multi-server queues with finite waiting rooms, II: Different numbers of servers

Abstract

We compare two queueing systems with identical general arrival streams, but different numbers of servers, different waiting room capacities, and stochastically ordered service time distributions. Under appropriate conditions, it is possible to construct two new systems on the same probability space so that the new systems are probabilistically equivalent to the original systems and each sample path of the stochastic process representing system size in one system lies entirely below the corresponding sample path in the other system. This construction implies stochastic order for these processes and many associated quantities of interest, such as a busy period, the number of customers lost in any interval, and the virtual waiting time.