  We consider the approximation of the performance of random walks in the
quarter-plane. The approximation is in terms of a random walk with a
product-form stationary distribution, which is obtained by perturbing the
transition probabilities along the boundaries of the state space. A Markov
reward approach is used to bound the approximation error. The main contribution
of the work is the formulation of a linear program that provides the
approximation error.
