Unicast, Multicast and Broadcast

Unicast - a transmission that is always meant for just one receiving address

• if the least significant bit in the first octet of a destination address is set to zero, it means that ethernet frame is intended for only the destination address
• if the least significant bit in the first octet of a destination address is set to one, it means you’re dealing with a multicast frame…

Multicast Frame - similarly set to all devices on the local network segment

• will be accepted or discarded by each device depending on criteria aside from their own hardware MAC address

Broadcast - sent to every single device on a LAN by using a special destination known as a broadcast address

• the Ethernet Broadcast address is all “F’s”