the readers can follow them without extra difficulty. This fea~ture makes itself different from many other books. The "book also presents some recent results in computer networks where the queueing theory finds its applications, such as DQDB erasure station location problem. I like the chapter on numerical solution methods the best. It discusses many numerical solutions of queueing networks when a closed formula solution does not exist, or it is too expensive to compute the complete solution. The chapter includes a wide spectrum of numerical solution methods, from convolution, to MVA (Mean Value Analysis), to simulation methods. Readers can probably find many useful algorithms and software packages described in this chapter. The introduction chapter could be smoother if the examples were selected more carefully. The readers may have a little difficulty following the performance study exatnples in this chapter cited directly from research papers; for example, the term "PE" (stands for process element) is defined nowhere in one of the example. In the three chapters devoted to queueing theory, the treatment of polling system and its wide applications to modeling the token ring type network are missing. The works by Kuehn [Kuehn 79], Takagi [Takagi 88], Bux [Bux 81] and Boxma [Boxma 87] are all important to the queueing analysis of the computer network performance. The book could have been more complete had these works been briefly cited, at the least. The exclusion of these works could have been due to the limitation in the size of the text and the time constraint in the lecture hours. [Kuehn 79] P.J. Kuehn, "Multiqueue System with Nonexhaustive Cyclic Services", Bell Laboratory Technical Journal 58 no. 3 (March 1979) [Takagi 88] H. Takagi, "Queueing Analysis of Polling Models", ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 20, no. 1, March 1988 Reviewed by: Xiannong Meng Bucknell University Lewisburg, Pennsylvania USA Brief Reviews Stochastic M o d e l i n g a n d t h e T h e o r y o f Q u e u e s , Ronald W. Wolfe, Prentice-Hall, 1989. 556 pp. $57.00. This book is intended for a first-year graduate course in stochastic processes, and queueing theory. It is mathematically rigorous, and requires a substantial background in probability theory. The first chapter provides a review of the necessary topics from probability theory. The is divided into two parts; the first covers renewal theory and Markov chains and the second cover queueing theory. The queueing theory section includes material on single-server queues, reversibility and queueing networks, the M / G / 1 and G I / M / c queues, and random walks and the GI/G/1 queue. The final two chapters cover some advanced material: work conservation and priority queues, and bounds and approximations. Each chapter ends with an extensive set of exercises, ranging from straightforward calculations applying the results of the chapter to challenging mathematical demonstrations. M a r k o v i a n Q u e u e s , O.P. Sharma, Ellis Horwood Publishers (a division of Simon and Schuster), 1990. 82 pp. $39.00.

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