Comparison Between Broadcast and Multicast
The comparison between broadcast and multicast is shown in Table 8.1. It can be seen that multicast has smaller bandwidth overhead, and devices in the LAN can join or leave multicast groups of interest or pre-determined to receive and send data, which is more flexible. For broadcast, all devices in the LAN will receive the packet, which will increase burden on other devices in the LAN and also increase burden on the LAN bandwidth.
Table 8.1. Comparison between broadcast and multicast
| Comparison | Broadcast | Multicast |
|---|---|---|
| Principle | Packets are sent to all hosts connected to the network. | Packets are sent only to their intended recipients in the network. |
| Transmission | One-to-all | One-to-many |
| Management | No need for group management | Need group management |
| Network | May cause network bandwidth waste and congestion | Controllable network bandwidth |
| Rate | Slow | Fast |