NICs are usually programmed to listen to three types of messages. Those are the messages sent to their specified address, messages broadcast to all NICs and multicast messages that can be used as for a particular card. There are three types of addressing:
1. Unicast – A transmission to a single interface card.
2. Multicast – A transmission in the network interface card.
3. Broadcast – A transmission to all interface cards in the network. RFC 919 and 922 describe IP broadcast datagrams.
* Limited Broadcast – Send to all NICs on each network segment as the source NIC. He has represented 255 255 255 255 TCP / IP address. The event was not broadcast by the router, only appeared on the network segment.
* Live streaming – for all hosts on the network. Router can be configured to forward broadcasts directed to the main network. For network 192.168.0.0, broadcast 192 168 255 255.
» Read more: Network Multicasting and Broadcasting