A Bound on the Variance of the Waiting Time in a Queueing System

Abstract

Kingman has shown, under very weak conditions on the interarrival- and sevice-time distributions, that First-Come-First-Served minimizes the variance of the waiting time among possible service disciplines. We show, under the same conditions, that Last-Come-First-Served maximizes the variance of the waiting time, thereby giving an upper bound on the variance among all disciplines.