Transmission types
With IPv4, we had three types of transmissions: unicast, multicast, and broadcast. IPv6 has similar transmission types, but drops broadcast and introduces anycast transmissions.
The easiest way to understand anycast is with an analogy. Imagine you have seen a crime being committed. Do you have to tell every police officer (broadcast)? Do you have to tell a particular police officer (unicast)? Or do you have to tell the first police officer that you see (anycast)? Anycast transmissions are sent to the nearest device from a predefined group of devices. Usually, anycast addresses are allocated to routers only.
Before we move on to the next section, I would just like to reiterate how important it is for you to understand the ...
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