In all these three terms, ‘cast’ refers to the transmission of data packets from the client to the recipient over the communication channel.
1. Unicast (One-to-One) :
It is a one-to-one communication technique, in which data communication takes place between a single sender and a single recipient in the network.
Examples of Unicast are :
* Browsing a website. The webserver is the sender and your computer is the receiver.
* Downloading a file from an FTP Server. FTP Server is the sender and your computer is the receiver.
2. Broadcast (One-to-All) :
It specifies one to all communication. Data communication takes place among all the devices available in the network. The data is sent from one computer once and a copy of that data will be forwarded to all the connected devices. Two types of Broadcast are: Limited Broadcasting and Direct Broadcasting.
Example of Broadcast :
* Television networks for video and audio distribution.
3. Multicast (One-to-Many) :
Multicast specifies one to group or one to many communication. In Multicast, one or more senders and one or more recipients participate in data transfer. IP multicast traffic is sent to a group and only members of that group receive the Multicast traffic. It uses IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) protocol to identify the group.
Examples of Multicast :
* Sending an e-mail to a particular mailing group.
