Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Allocation of service capacity ('staffing') at stations in queueing networks is both of fundamental and practical interest. Unfortunately, the problem is mathematically intractable in general and one therefore typically resorts to approximations or computer simulation. This talk describes work in progress with M. Squillante and S. Ghosh (IBM Research) on an algorithm that serves as an approximation for the 'best' capacity allocation rule. The algorithm can be interpreted as a discrete-time dynamical system, and we are interested in uniqueness of a fixed point and in convergence properties. No prior knowledge on queueing networks will be assumed.