For the stationary loss systems M/M/m/K and GI/M/m/K, we study two quantities: the number of lost customers during the time interval (0, t] (the first system only), and the number of lost customers among the first n customers to arrive (both systems). We derive explicit bounds for the total variation distances between the distributions of these quantities and compound Poisson–geometric distributions. The bounds are small in the light traffic case, i.e., when the loss of a customer is a ‘rare’ event. To prove our results, we show that the studied quantities can be interpreted as accumulated rewards of stationary renewal reward processes, embedded into the queue length process or the process of queue lengths immediately before arrivals of new customers, and apply general results by Erhardsson on compound Poisson approximation for renewal reward processes.
