What is Broadcasting? - Definition from Techopedia

Broadcasting

What Does Broadcasting Mean?

Broadcasting is the simultaneous transmission of the same message to multiple recipients. In networking, broadcasting occurs when a transmitted data packet is received by all network devices.

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Security issues may arise during broadcasting and lead to data loss if a network is attacked by intruders. In non-networking or electronic broadcasting, the term broadcasting denotes the transfer of audio and video data between nodes and devices.

Techopedia Explains Broadcasting

Broadcasting may occur in either of the following ways:

  • A high-level program operation, such as broadcasting the Message Passing Interface (MPI)
  • A low-level networking operation, such as broadcasting via Ethernet.

Broadcasting is basically limited to local area network (LAN) systems. In a LAN, however, its performance impact is more substantial in a wide area network (WAN).

Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) uses multicasting, rather than broadcasting, to avoid network interruption when services are required by only one or two nodes. During data transmission, IPv6 transmits data directly to devices and does not disturb network device traffic.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.