Multicast Routing
Multicast refers to a method of group communication, the sender sends data to multiple receivers or nodes present in the network simultaneously. Multicast Routing protocols are used to route multicast traffic.
There are two types of multicast routing protocols:
- Dense mode
- Sparse mode
Dense mode
It is used when most of the subnets of the network should be able to receive multicast traffic.
Some of the dense mode routing protocols are as follows:
- DVMRP (Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol)
- MOSPF (Multicast OSPF)
- PIM Dense Mode
Sparse mode
It forwards the multicast traffic only when the router requests it.
Differences between Unicast routing protocols and Multicast routing protocols:
| Unicast Routing Protocols | Multicast Routing Protocols |
| It gives one-to-one mapping. | It provides one-to-many mapping. |
| It uses a single node topology. | It uses star, mesh, tree, or hybrid topology. |
| It works with a single sender and receiver. | It can have multiple senders and multiple receivers. |
| It makes efficient use of bandwidth. | It does not use the bandwidth efficiently. |
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