BCMSN Exam Cram™ 2 (Exam Cram 642-811)

Overview of Traffic Types

Before getting too far ahead, let's first discuss the three methods used to send data: unicasts, broadcasts, and multicasts.

Unicasts

Unicasts are the most common form of communication because most traffic that is generated is sent to a specific machine, such as accessing a Web page or sending an email to an SMTP server.

With unicasts, a separate packet must be sent to each destination. In a shared environment, every network device on the segment will see the packet, but only the actual destination will process it. In a switched environment, only devices on the source and destination segments will actually see the frame. ...