Broadcast definitions and functions

In general, to broadcast information is to send it to many receivers. For example, radio stations broadcast signals to many listeners, and digital TV subscribers receive signals broadcast by their TV providers

In computer networks, Broadcast is the process of sending data packets to many recipients at once. For example, a local area network can be configured so that any device on the network can broadcast messages to others.

When the network device wants to broadcast, it transmits the data packet to the network broadcast address. Network hardware, such as routers or switches, they do packet delivery jobs to every other device in the group. Eligible device groups are called broadcast domains.

This type of communication is also called all-to-all, because each device can transmit messages simultaneously to every other device.

The broadcast network is supported by IPv4, the network protocol used by most of today’s Internet. However, the newer IPv6 protocol dismisses broadcasts that support multicasting.

Broadcast is one of the five main techniques for directing computer network traffic. The others are unicast, multicast, anycast, and geocast.

In a Wi-Fi network, Broadcast means allowing other wireless devices to be able to scan and use access from a Wi-fi network by broadcasting their SSID. that’s the reason you can see the name of the neighboring Wi-Fi network when your device scans for wireless access points.

Wi-fi hardware can be configured not to broadcast the SSID. In this case, the Wi-fi network is called a hidden network. The wireless device can still connect to the hidden network if the user manually enter the network name.