Delivery Flashcards
What are the categories of messaging?
Unicast: Sent to a single, specific recipient.
Multicast: Sent to a group of recipients.
Broadcast: Sent to all recipients on a network.
Anycast: Sent to any member of a group, often used for routing to the nearest server.
What is Unicast communication?
Unicast is when messages are addressed to a single node. Routers determine the best path to deliver the message.
Example: Direct email or one-on-one chat messages.
What is Broadcast communication?
Broadcast sends messages to all nodes on the network, typically used in LAN environments.
Example: Ethernet or IP network broadcasts (e.g., FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF for MAC-based networks, or 255.255.255.255 for IP-based).
Efficiency: Fast in LANs but avoided in WANs due to excessive traffic.
What is Multicast communication?
Multicast sends messages to a group of recipients that have joined the multicast group.
Addresses: Uses specific multicast addresses (e.g., 01:5E:00:00:00:01 for MAC, or 224.0.0.0 – 239.255.255.255 for IP).
Efficiency: Efficient in LANs but requires routers to manage group membership in WANs.
Multicast Tunneling: Allows multicast messages to traverse networks that don’t support multicast.
What is Anycast communication?
Anycast delivers messages to the nearest member of a group, often used in routing or load balancing scenarios.
How does LAN Efficiency compare for broadcast and multicast?
In LANs, broadcast and multicast transmission times are similar to unicast, both with time complexity O(1).
How does WAN Efficiency differ for broadcast and multicast?
Broadcast is avoided in WANs due to inefficiency and excessive traffic.
Multicast adds complexity because routers must manage group memberships, making it less efficient for WANs than for LANs.
What is Multicast Tunneling?
It involves encapsulating multicast datagrams in larger unicast datagrams to deliver messages across networks that don’t support multicast.
