Prioritized e‐mail servicing to reduce non‐spam delay and loss: A performance analysis

This paper proposes a prioritized e‐mail servicing on e‐mail servers to reduce the delay and loss of non‐spam e‐mails due to queuing. Using a prioritized two‐queue scheme, non‐spam e‐mails are queued in a fast queue and given higher service priority than spam e‐mails that are queued in a slow queue. Four prioritized e‐mail service strategies for the two‐queue scheme are proposed and analyzed. We modeled these four strategies using discrete‐time Markov chain analysis under different e‐mail traffic loads and service capacities. Non‐spam e‐mails can be delivered within a small delay, even under heavy e‐mail loadings and high spam‐to‐non‐spam a priori. Results from our analysis of the two‐queue scheme show that it gives non‐spam delay and loss probability two orders of magnitude smaller than the typical single‐queue approach during heavy spam traffic. Moreover, prioritized e‐mail servicing protects e‐mail servers from spam attacks. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.