Broadcast and Group Addresses
An address that identifies a single system is called a unicast or individual address. A frame sent to a unicast MAC address is targeted at a single MAC addresses destination.
A station attached to a multiaccess LAN has the capability to direct a frameto every system on the LAN. A broadcast address is used to do this. All MAC interfaces absorb any frame that is addressed to the broadcast address:
X'FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF
This address consists of 48 1-bits.
Sometimes it is convenient to send a frame to a select group of recipient systems. Group addresses (also called multicast addresses) implement this feature. A bit in the first address byte is equal to 0 for an individual address and 1 for a group destination address. ...
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