A defining attribute of any such community communication is its one-to-many supply mannequin. As a substitute of sending particular person copies of information to every recipient, info is transmitted to a particular group of hosts concurrently. This selective distribution contrasts with broadcasting, the place knowledge is distributed to all gadgets on a community, and unicasting, the place knowledge is distributed to a single, particular vacation spot. For instance, a video stream is perhaps despatched to subscribers of a selected channel with out impacting different community customers.
This technique optimizes community bandwidth utilization and server useful resource allocation. By minimizing redundant transmissions, it permits for environment friendly dissemination of content material to a number of receivers. Traditionally, it has been worthwhile in purposes equivalent to video conferencing, on-line gaming, and software program updates, the place delivering the identical knowledge to a lot of customers is required. This contrasts with earlier, much less environment friendly strategies which burdened servers and networks with duplicate transmissions.
