Skip to main content

Unicast, multicast, and broadcast addresses


There are three types of Ethernet addresses:
  • unicast addresses – represent a single LAN interface. A unicast frame will be sent to a specific device, not to a group of devices on the LAN.
  • multicast addresses – represent a group of devices in a LAN. A frame sent to a multicast address will be forwarded to a group of devices on the LAN.
  • broadcast addresses – represent all device on the LAN. Frames sent to a broadcast address will be delivered to all devices on the LAN.

The broadcast address has the value of FFFF.FFFF.FFFF (all binary ones). The switch will flood broadcast frames out all ports except the port that it was received on.
Multicast frames have a value of 1 in the least-significant bit of the first octet of the destination address. This helps a network switch to distinguish between unicast and multicast addresses. One example of an Ethernet multicast address would be 01:00:0C:CC:CC:CC, which is an address used by CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cisco three-layer hierarchical model

Because networks can be extremely complicated, with multiple protocols and diverse technologies, Cisco has developed a layered hierarchical model for designing a reliable network infrastructure. This three-layer model helps you design, implement, and maintain a scalable

Access Control Lists (extended)

Access Control List  or  ACL  is a technic of controling network traffic. It is a list of rules with which traffic flow can be manipulated - permitted or denied. By default, traffic flow from the interface with the higher security level (for example "inside" interface) to interface with the lower security level (example "outside" interface) is allowed by default, but the flow of traffic from "outside" to the "inside" interface must be explicitly permited. 

Classes of IP addresses

TCP/IP defines five classes of IP addresses: class A, B, C, D, and E. Each class has a range of valid IP addresses. The value of the first octet determines the class. IP addresses