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Unicast sends data to one recipient, multicast sends it to a selected group, and broadcast sends it to every host within the applicable broadcast scope. IPv4 supports all three patterns. IPv6 has no broadcast addresses; it uses multicast for functions that need to reach multiple nodes.
How the three delivery patterns differ
| Pattern | Intended recipients | How recipients are selected | IPv4 and IPv6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicast | One destination | The destination address identifies an individual recipient | Used in both IPv4 and IPv6 |
| Multicast | A selected group | A group address; hosts may join or leave the group | IPv4 group addresses span 224.0.0.0–239.255.255.255, as specified in RFC 1112 (1989). IPv6 multicast uses the FF00::/8 prefix specified in RFC 4291 (2006). |
| Broadcast | All hosts within the relevant broadcast scope | All hosts that hear the broadcast | IPv4 supports broadcast; IPv6 has no broadcast address type, according to RFC 4291 (2006). |
A simple analogy is a direct message for unicast, a message to people who opted into a group for multicast, and an announcement audible to everyone in a room for broadcast. It illustrates audience size, not the exact way networks determine scope or forward traffic.
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What unicast means
With unicast, a packet’s destination identifies one recipient. It is the familiar pattern behind most ordinary client-to-server communication: one client sends data to a particular server, or a server sends data to a particular client. The defining feature is the destination audience—one endpoint—not whether the communication is a request, response, or a particular kind of application traffic.
What multicast means
Multicast addresses a datagram to a host group rather than to one individual host or every host in a scope. Hosts can join or leave that group over time. In IPv4, the destination is an address representing the group; the IPv4 multicast group address range is 224.0.0.0–239.255.255.255, as defined by RFC 1112.
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Group delivery is not a guarantee
Multicast delivery is best effort. A group member is not guaranteed to receive every datagram, and datagrams are not guaranteed to arrive in the same order. RFC 1112 describes multicast delivery as having the same best-efforts reliability as regular unicast IP datagrams. “Multicast” therefore describes the intended audience, not a promise of reliable or ordered delivery.
How group membership is managed
IPv4 uses IGMP for multicast group management; IPv6 uses Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD). These protocols concern how group membership is managed, rather than changing multicast’s basic one-sender-to-a-selected-group pattern. For an overview of IGMP, see Cloudflare’s IGMP explainer.
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What broadcast means
Broadcast sends to all hosts within the relevant broadcast scope. Each host that hears the datagram must do at least some processing, even if the traffic is not ultimately useful to it. RFC 919, published by the RFC Editor in 1984, states: “When a datagram is broadcast, it imposes a cost on every host that hears it.” That broad audience is why broadcast is not the right default for every one-to-many communication.
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IPv4 and IPv6: the key difference
IPv4 supports unicast, multicast, and broadcast. IPv6 supports unicast and multicast address types but has no broadcast addresses; RFC 4291 states, “There are no broadcast addresses in IPv6.” IPv6 functions that need to reach multiple nodes use multicast addressing and protocols instead. It is more precise to say that IPv6 has no broadcast address type than to say without qualification that “broadcast is replaced by multicast.”
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IPv6 multicast addresses use the FF00::/8 prefix specified in RFC 4291. IPv4 multicast group addresses span 224.0.0.0–239.255.255.255 under RFC 1112. Those ranges identify protocol allocations; they are not performance or adoption statistics.
When the distinction matters
- One specific destination: Unicast is the one-to-one pattern.
- A defined set of participating hosts: Multicast targets a group whose membership can change. Its best-effort delivery means applications must not assume every group member receives every datagram.
- Every host in a broadcast scope: Broadcast reaches all hosts that hear it, with processing overhead on each of them.
- IPv6 networking: Do not look for an IPv6 broadcast address. IPv6 has multicast, including for relevant multiple-node functions, and uses MLD for multicast group management.
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