Polling system

In queueing theory, a discipline within the mathematical theory of probability, a polling system or polling model is a system where a single server visits a set of queues in some order. The model has applications in computer networks and telecommunications, manufacturing and road traffic management. The term polling system was coined at least as early as 1968 and the earliest study of such a system in 1957 where a single repairman servicing machines in the British cotton industry was modelled.

Typically it is assumed that the server visits the different queues in a cyclic manner. Exact results exist for waiting times, marginal queue lengths and joint queue lengths at polling epochs in certain models. Mean value analysis techniques can be applied to compute average quantities.

In a fluid limit, where a very large number of small jobs arrive the individual nodes can be viewed to behave similarly to fluid queues (with a two state process).