An Analytic Model of the Leaky Bucket With General Distributions for Both Token and Cell Arrivals

In this paper we present a linear algebra queuing theory implementation of the leaky bucket traffic shaping mechanism. We develop explicit equations for steady-state and transient behavior. We also derive inter-departure times for the leaky bucket cell departure stream, compute its moments and study its transient behavior. We show that the linear algebra queuing theory approach to modelling the leaky bucket provides a clear and concise technique for analyzing its behavior. We present several examples of the linear algebra queuing theory approach to modelling the leaky bucket with various cell arrival and token arrival distributions.