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IP multicast is a method of sending
Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...
(IP)
datagram A datagram is a basic transfer unit associated with a packet-switched network. Datagrams are typically structured in header and payload sections. Datagrams provide a connectionless communication service across a packet-switched network. The del ...
s to a group of interested receivers in a single transmission. It is the IP-specific form of
multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused wit ...
and is used for
streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...
and other network applications. It uses specially reserved multicast address blocks in
IPv4 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP). It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. IPv4 was the first version d ...
and
IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. I ...
. Protocols associated with IP multicast include Internet Group Management Protocol, Protocol Independent Multicast and Multicast VLAN Registration. IGMP snooping is used to manage IP multicast traffic on layer-2 networks. IP multicast is described in . IP multicast was first standardized in 1986. Its specifications have been augmented in to include group management and in to include administratively scoped addresses.


Technical description

IP multicast is a technique for