Multicast Group as Shared Communication Medium

Multicast transport definitions can be either unitary or fragmentary. They do not require any initial connection protocol, so the determining factor is the use case.

  • In a unitary use case, a set of communicating peers could all use the same transport. For example, all endpoints send on the same multicast group, and all endpoints listen to the same multicast group (or groups).
  • In the more common fragmentary case, administrators control network data flow to achieve specific results, such as bandwidth allocation, performance, data segregation, or asymmetric multicast topologies. Sending peers and listening peers use related transports with the same port, but different send and listen groups.
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