Artalejo Rodríguez, Jesús ManuelLópez Herrero, María Jesús2023-06-202023-06-202001-030021-900210.1239/jap/996986654https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/57406The authors thank the referee for his detailed comments on an earlier version of this paper. This work was supported by the European Commission through INTAS 96-0828, by the DGES through project 98-0837 and by the Complutense University of Madrid through project PR64/99-8501.This paper presents an algorithmic analysis of the busy period for the M/M/c queueing system. By setting the busy period equal to the time interval during which at least one server is busy, we develop a first step analysis which gives the Laplace-Stieltjes transform of the busy period as the solution of a finite system of linear equations. This approach is useful in obtaining a suitable recursive procedure for computing the moments of the length of a busy period and the number of customers served during it. The maximum entropy formalism is then used to analyse what is the influence of a given set of moments on the distribution of the busy period and to estimate the true busy period distribution. Our study supplements a recent work of Daley and Servi (1998) and other studies where the busy period of a multiserver queue follows a different definition, i.e., a busy period is the time interval during which all servers are engaged.engjournal articlehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3215752http://www.jstor.org/restricted access519.8Multiserve queuesbusy periodnumber of customers servedmaximumentropy principleInvestigación operativa (Matemáticas)1207 Investigación Operativa