Henry Wong wrote:
Just being a bit anal here, terminology wise, neither of these are IP addresses. For broadcast, it is a broadcast address. For multicast, it is a multicast group address. Neither of these addresses are IP address, as they don't go to a particular machine. Broadcast messages go to all machines. Multicast messages goes to all machines who are receiving on that address.
Well, if we're being really picky, the broadcast absolutely is an IP address. It's not a
station address. The first and last IPs in a subnet are served for network identification and all-station addressing, respectively.
To the properly perverse individual, there are some interesting uses for the broadcast address. For example, if you ping it, everyone on the subnet accepting ping requests responds. Fast, easy way to fill an ARP cache.