Abstract The impact of traffic dependence on queueing performance is of great significance to traffic control mechanism and resource allocation algorithm in high-speed networks. This article adopts a unique method to analyze the influence that the traffic dependence brings to the queueing performance under given network conditions. The results of simulation show that long-range dependence during a certain time scale will deteriorate the queueing performance, and that such an effect is insensitive to increasing the buffer size. Also the marginal distribution and Hurst exponent of traffic series are inadequate to determine the queueing performance.