In this paper we consider the operation of the move-to-front scheme where the requests form a Markov chain of N states with transition probability matrix P. It is shown that the configurations of items at successive requests form a Markov chain, and its transition probability matrix has eigenvalues that are the eigenvalues of all the principal submatrices of P except those of order N—1. We also show that the multiplicity of the eigenvalues of submatrices of order m is the number of derangements of N — m objects. The last result is shown to be true even if P is not a stochastic matrix.

This paper presents a new proof of Sengupta's invariant relationship between virtual waiting time and attained sojourn time and its application to estimating the virtual waiting time distribution by counting the number of arrivals and departures of a G/G/1 FIFO queue. Since this relationship does not require any parametric assumptions, our method is non-parametric. This method is expected to have applications, such as call processing in communication switching systems, particularly when the arrival or service process is unknown.

This paper consists of two parts. The first part provides a more elementary proof of the asymptotic theorem of the refusals stream for an M/GI/1/n queueing system discussed in Abramov (1991a). The central property of the refusals stream discussed in the second part of this paper is that, if the expectations of interarrival and service time of an M/GI/1/n queueing system are equal to each other, then the expectation of the number of refusals during a busy period is equal to 1. This property is extended for a wide family of single-server queueing systems with refusals including, for example, queueing systems with bounded waiting time.

Let {Xn} be the Lindley random walk on [0,∞) defined by . Here, {An} is a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables. When for some r > 1, {Xn} converges at a geometric rate in total variation to an invariant distribution π; i.e. there exists s > 1 such that for every initial state . In this communication we supply a short proof and some extensions of a large deviations result initially due to Veraverbeke and Teugels (1975, 1976): the largest s satisfying the above relationship is and satisfies φ ‘(r0) = 0.

This paper is concerned with the preservation of unimodality under coherent structures of independent components having a common life distribution function. This result in a way generalizes a result of Alam [1], as Alam's result indirectly also deals with preservation of unimodality for (n – i + 1)-out-of-n systems of independent and identically distributed components. The usefulness of this property of coherent systems in obtaining sharper upper bounds on the reliability of the concerned system has been illustrated below for a bridge structure with components having a gamma life distribution function.