What is a Broadcast?

eeeboy · 08-28-2006, 03:39 AM

I have seen this term in place. Broadcast IP.

Things like pinging broadcast in linux .. ping -b syntax and many more.

I want to know more about this. And obviously I think theres nothing better than tech-faq to know.

Thanx in Advance.

Will.Spencer · 08-28-2006, 06:27 AM

A broadcast ping is simply sending an ICMP Echo Request packet to an IPv4 broadcast address.

For an explanation of broadcast addressing under IPv4, read RFC 919: Broadcasting Internet Datagrams.

Broadcast pings have a bit of dark side, in that they have been used to flood hosts by spoofing the source of the Echo Request messange to force a barrage of Echo Reply messages to be directed to an unsuspecting host.

The best place to learn about the syntax of the `ping` command is the man page for ping from your own system.