The authors introduce general starvation and consider cyclic networks with general blocking and starvation (GBS). The mechanism of general blocking allows the server to process a limited number of jobs when the buffer downstream is full, and that of general starvation allows the server to perform a limited number of services in anticipation of jobs that are yet to arrive. The two main goals of this paper are to investigate how the throughput of yclic GBS networks is affected by varying (1) the total number of jobs J, and (2) the buffer allocation k=(k1,...,km) subject to a fixed total buffer capacity K=k1+ëëë+km. In particular, the authors obtain sufficient conditions for the throughput to be symmetric in J and to be maximized when J=K/2. They also show that the equal buffer allocation is optimal under the two regimes of light or heavy usage. In order to establish these results, the authors obtain several intermediate structural properties of the throughput, using duality, reversibility, and concavity, which are of independent interest.
