and ? is the average rate at which packets are arriving to be serviced. This formula can be used when no packets are dropped from the queue.

The maximum queuing delay is proportional to buffer size. The longer the line of packets waiting to be transmitted, the longer the average waiting time is. The router queue of packets waiting to be sent also introduces a potential cause of packet loss. Since the router has a finite amount of buffer memory to hold the queue, a router that receives packets at too high a rate may experience a full