  The exact Markov modeling analysis of erasure networks with finite buffers is
an extremely hard problem due to the large number of states in the system. In
such networks, packets are lost due to either link erasures or blocking by the
full buffers. In this paper, we propose a novel method that iteratively
estimates the performance parameters of the network and more importantly
reduces the computational complexity compared to the exact analysis. This is
the first work that analytically studies the effect of finite memory on the
throughput and latency in general wired acyclic networks with erasure links. As
a case study, a random packet routing scheme with ideal feedback on the links
is used. The proposed framework yields a fairly accurate estimate of the
probability distribution of buffer occupancies at the intermediate nodes using
which we can not only identify the congested and starving nodes but also obtain
analytical expressions for throughput and average delay of a packet in the
network. The theoretical framework presented here can be applied to many wired
networks, from Internet to more futuristic applications such as
networks-on-chip under various communication and network coding scenarios.
