Fairness considerations of scheduling in multi-server and multi-queue systems

— Multi-server and multi-queue architectures are common mechanisms used in a large variety of applications (call centers, Web services, computer systems). One of the major motivations behind common queue operation strategies is to grant fair service to the jobs (customers). Such systems have been thoroughly studied by Queueing Theory from their performance (delay distribution) perspective. However, their fairness aspects have hardly been studied and have not been quantified to date. In this work we use the Resource Allocation Queueing Fairness Measure (RAQFM) to quantitatively analyze several multi-server systems and operational mechanisms. The results yield the relative fairness of the mechanisms as a function of the system configuration and parameters. Practitioners can use these results to quantitatively account for system fairness and to weigh efficiency aspects versus fairness aspects in designing and controlling their queueing systems. In particular, we quantitatively demons...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: VALUETOOLS
• Authors: David Raz, Benjamin Avi-Itzhak, Hanoch Levy
• Keywords: Allocation Queueing Fairness, Common Queue Operation, Fairness Aspects, Hardware, VALUETOOLS 2006