Multicast
Multicast is defined as a type of transmission of data where one or more sending hosts sends the data packets to one or more receiving hosts in another network. This type of transmission is known as one-to-many communication. Class D of IP address is reserved for multicast groups. Multicast is more efficient than unicast when multiple nodes want to receive the same data. Let’s see the example of multicast transmission.
As shown in the above figure, we have two networks A and B. Sending host A belongs to one network and multiple receiving hosts from network B. Examples where multicast transmission is used are:
- Video conference
- Internal Streaming
- Sending an email or WhatsApp message to a group of people
Types of Broadcast Network
In a computer network, there are multiple devices known as nodes connected together. There are multiple ways through which we can transmit data between these connected nodes. Transmission can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many. This transmission of data in the network is known as casting. Casting is of three types.