Multicast address
Multicast address
Main page

Multicast address

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Multicast address

A multicast address is a logical identifier for a group of hosts in a computer network that are available to process datagrams or frames intended to be multicast for a designated network service. Multicast addressing can be used in the link layer (layer 2 in the OSI model), such as Ethernet multicast, and at the internet layer (layer 3 for OSI) for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) or Version 6 (IPv6) multicast.

IPv4 multicast addresses are defined by the most-significant bit pattern of 1110. This originates from the classful network design of the early Internet when this group of addresses was designated as Class D. The CIDR notation for this group is 224.0.0.0/4. The group includes the addresses from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255.

The address range is divided into blocks each assigned a specific purpose or behavior.

The following table is a list of notable well-known IPv4 addresses that are reserved for IP multicasting and that are registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

Multicast addresses in IPv6 use the prefix ff00::/8.

For all multicast addresses, the prefix field holds the binary value 11111111.

Currently, three of the four flag bits in the flg field are defined; the most-significant flag bit is reserved for future use.

The four-bit scope field (sc) is used to indicate where the address is valid and unique.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.