Introduction

Routable protocols enable the transmission of data between computers in different segments of a network. However, high volumes of certain kinds of network traffic can affect network efficiency because they slow down transmission speed. The amount of network traffic generated varies with the 3 types of data transmissions:

• Broadcast
• Multicast
• Unicast

In the pages that follow, we are going to analyse each data transmission type because it is very important to understand the type of traffic they generate, what they are used for and why they exist on the network.

Before we proceed, please note that understanding the OSI Model (especially Layer 2 and 3), Ethernet and the way a packet is structured is fundamental to understanding broadcast, multicast or unicast type of traffic.