ISBN: 978-2-940222-40-7 2010, 420 pages, 16x24 cm, Hardcover @book{leboudec2010performance, title={Performance Evaluation of Computer and Communication Systems}, author={Le Boudec, Jean-Yves}, year={2010}, publisher={EPFL Press, Lausanne, Switzerland} } Order this book; Free publisher version (Free pdf download, non printable -- Thanks to EPFL Press) -- errata for the publisher's version. Free postprint version (Latest version, less fancy formatting, but with bug fixes, printable.)

Performance Evaluation is often the critical part in evaluating the results of a research project. Many of us are familiar with simulations, but it is often difficult to address questions like

• I want to estimate a probability of error and I see no error in n experiments: what can I say about the error probability ?
• I would like to characterize the fairness of my protocol. Should I use Jain's Fairness Index or the Lorenz Curve Gap ?
• should I eliminate the beginning of the simulation in order to wait until the system stabilizes ?
• I would like to fit an explanatory model to my data, I was told to use least squares for that; is that the right thing to do ? Why ?
• I simulate a random way point model but the average speed in my simulation is not as expected. What happened ?
• the reviewers of my paper complained that I did not provide confidence intervals. What is that ? How do I get them ?
• how do I analyze the power consumption of my system ?
• I would like to fit a distribution to the flow sizes that I measured but all my measurements are truncated to a maximum value; how do I account for the truncation~?
• what is Palm calculus and why should I know about it ?

These and other questions are the topic of this book, which began as a set of lecture notes taught at EPFL.