Using memory to control admission to unobservable queues

Abstract

We study admission control to an unobservable M/M/1 queue. A memoryless controller can only randomly thin arrivals (random routing, RR). We show that a gated admission (GA) policy, blocking arrivals for a fixed period after each admission, stochastically dominates RR at equal throughput, improving social welfare under any sojourn-based cost. We characterize the welfare-maximizing threshold and define the Price of Forgetting as the welfare ratio. This ratio is unbounded even though the absolute welfare gain stays uniformly bounded.