Product-form distributions and network algorithms (abstract only)

The "product-form" characterization of the stationary distribution make a queueing network analytically a lot more tractable. This has been the primary source of inspiration in the search for "productform" characterization. In this talk, I will discuss implications of "product-form" distributions for algorithm design by means of two examples: (i) intra-queue scheduling and (ii) inter-queue scheduling in a constrained queueing network. Near the end of the talk, by means of a novel comparison result between stationary distributions of Markov chains, I will briefly discuss notion of "approximate" product-form distributions.