Broadcast traffic

Broadcast traffic is network traffic that has a single source but is destined for all hosts within a subnet. This is achieved by using a broadcast network address as the destination address of the communication.

At Layer 3, the IPv4 broadcast address is the last address in the subnet. However, the address 255.255.255.255 is known as a special case broadcast address, which also achieves the same result, regardless of the actual subnet within which it is used.

IPv6 does not have an equivalent broadcast mechanism.

At Layer 2, the corresponding Broadcast MAC address is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF.

Broadcast traffic is one of three types of network traffic, the other two of which are Unicast traffic and obsidian/notes/Multicast traffic.

Links:

https://networklessons.com/multicast/introduction-to-multicast