Transmission of an IP datagram to a host group, identified by a single IP destination address. All members of a destination host group receive the multicast datagram, making this technique well-suited for multiparty conferencing applications. Host groups may be a permanent or transient.
Routing technique that allows IP traffic to be propagated from one source to a number of destinations or from many sources to many destinations. Rather than sending one packet to each destination, one packet is sent to a multicast group identified by a single IP destination group address.
To send information over the Internet to a group of computers that share the same IP address
Traditionally, IP packets are transmitted in one of either two ways - Unicast (one sender to one recipient) or Broadcast (one sender to everybody on the network). IP Multicast is a third way to deliver IP packets to a group of hosts on the network - not everybody.
A method of sending data simultaneously to a selected group of recipients. Multicast makes efficient use of bandwidth because it unicasts to all intended recipients and avoids broadcasting to unnecessary destinations.
A one-to-many transmission, in contrast to Unicast, Broadcast. An extension to the standard IP network-level protocol. RFC 1112, Host Extensions for IP Multicasting, authored by Steve Deering in 1989, laid the groundwork for IP Multicasting. The RFC describes IP Multicasting as: "the transmission of an IP datagram to a 'host group', a set of zero or more hosts identified by a single IP destination address. A multicast datagram is delivered to all members of its destination host group with the same 'best-efforts' reliability as regular unicast IP datagrams. ... The membership of a host group is dynamic; that is, hosts may join and leave groups at any time. There is no restriction on the location or number of members in a host group. A host may be a member of more than one group at a time."
IP Multicast is a networking transmission protocol allowing multiple computers to simultaneously receive the same transmission. This is faster than sending packet to each individual computer, and is an efficient way to update many remote locations simultaneously. Each player site is "tuned in" for the packets being sent by the broadcast server. The question then arises, how can each remote site deliver customised content to its localised audience? The answer is in the fact that each player knows where it is, and makes intelligent choices about what parts of the broadcast it needs, if any. IP Multicast is not limited to the Internet and terrestrial connections, but can also be broadcast over Satellite to be received by inexpensive VSAT dishes, often already part of a company's infrastructure for their WAN. In this way, multimedia networks of unlimited sizes can be created.
Sending out data to distributed servers on Multicast Backbone. For large amounts of data, IP multicast is more efficient than normal Internet transmissions because the server can broadcast a message to many recipients simultaneously. Unlike traditional Internet traffic that requires separate connections for each source-destination pair, IP multicasting allows many recipients to share the same source. This means that just one set of packets is transmitted to all the destinations.
A means of simultaneous transmission of data from a server to a group of selected users on a TCP/IP network, (internal, intranet or Internet). IP multicast is used for streaming audio and video over the network.
The ability to create a packet of data once and have it sent to multiple locations simultaneously. Satellite is one the most efficient way to multicast content.
A system for sending IP transmissions out only one time, but allowing for multiple users to receive it. This would reduce the bandwidth required for audio and video broadcasting over the Internet, but it is not widely used yet.
A protocol for transmitting IP datagrams from one source to many destinations in a LAN or WAN.
IP Multicast is a method of forwarding IP datagrams to a group of interested receivers. See the article on multicast for a general discussion of this subject - this article is specifically about IP Multicast.