This rigourous and self-contained book describes mathematicaland, in particular, stochastic methods to assess the performance ofnetworked systems. It consists of three parts. The first part is areview on probability theory. Part two covers the classical theoryof stochastic processes (Poisson, renewal, Markov and queuingtheory), which are considered to be the basic building blocks forperformance evaluation studies. Part three focuses on therelatively new field of the physics of networks. This part dealswith the recently obtained insights that many very different largecomplex networks - such as the Internet, World Wide Web, proteins,utility infrastructures, social networks - evolve and behaveaccording to more general common scaling laws. This understandingis useful when assessing the end-to-end quality of communicationsservices, for example, in Internet telephony, real-time video andinteracting games. Containing problems and solutions, this book isideal for graduate students taking courses in performanceanalys
