Individual headstart strategies for combating congestion

This paper examines the process by which a user of a queueing system selects his arrival time to the system to compensate for unpredictable delays in the system if he wishes to complete service at a particular time. Considering the case in which all the system users have already decided on their arrival times to the system and will not change these times, this paper investigates how a new user of this system develops his strategy for selecting his arrival time. The distribution of this customer's arrival time is then obtained for a special case.