Chapter 7. Multicast
Multicast is the act of one source machine sending packets to multiple destinations via a single data stream. In normal unicast communications, every data requester is sent an individual data stream from the data source. There are only two modes of communication, one-to-one or one-to-all. This can be a waste of resources if hundreds of requesters are asking for the same data source. Imagine how much bandwidth 500 home users wanting to download the same movie clip from a Web site use. One multicast data stream rather than hundreds of individual connections could service all those requests. Cisco supports multicast routing on all its series 1000 and higher routers.
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