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Comparing Unicast, Multicast, Broadcast

This document provides an overview of unicast, multicast, and broadcast messaging and their uses. Unicast is point-to-point communication using IP addresses, suitable for messaging between two devices. Multicast allows one-to-many communication using multicast IP addresses and is more efficient than unicast for multiple consumers, but requires more network configuration. Broadcast sends to all devices on a subnet. The document also details that since version 16, Logix produce tags can use unicast or multicast, with unicast preferable for a single consumer and multicast for multiple consumers. However, EtherNet/IP I/O always uses multicast.

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70 views4 pages

Comparing Unicast, Multicast, Broadcast

This document provides an overview of unicast, multicast, and broadcast messaging and their uses. Unicast is point-to-point communication using IP addresses, suitable for messaging between two devices. Multicast allows one-to-many communication using multicast IP addresses and is more efficient than unicast for multiple consumers, but requires more network configuration. Broadcast sends to all devices on a subnet. The document also details that since version 16, Logix produce tags can use unicast or multicast, with unicast preferable for a single consumer and multicast for multiple consumers. However, EtherNet/IP I/O always uses multicast.

Uploaded by

Dat Nguyen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Unicast, multicast, broadcast

Application Note
Comparing unicast, multicast, broadcast
50977
April, 2008

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Unicast, multicast, broadcast

Purpose
Povide an overview for the 3 types of Ethernet messaging (unicast, multicast, and
broadcast) and provide use cases.

Also, provide detailed information on unicast produce tag capability in version 16 of


RSLogix5000.

Overview – unicast, multicast, broadcast


 Unicast
- Used for point-to-point communications.

- Uses IP addressing classes A, B, or C. (e.g. 10.88.76.9)

- Can be TCP (most frequent) or UDP.

- Use examples: HMI, MSGing, programming.

- Unicast typically has a TTL (time-to-live) parameter of 32 (or more) which means that it
can propagate through 31 routers (assuming that the target is outside the subnet).
(For details about TTL, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_live )

 Multicast
- Used for one-to-many communications.

- Multicast allows for multiple consumers.


However, a single consumer is supported.

- With multiple consumers, multicast is more efficient and timely than unicast.

- Uses IP addressing class D. (e.g. 239.192.1.2)

- Always is UDP.

- Video and EtherNet/IP I/O are 2 examples.

- More switch management knowledge, IGMP, is required than for unicast.


IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) is recommended when multicast is
present on the network. The things to remember when using IGMP are:
- Enable IGMP in the switches
- Enable an IGMP querier
- Verify that multicast is propagating to only registered consumers.

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Unicast, multicast, broadcast

- The TTL parameter in the IP packet determines the maximum number of routers a
packet can traverse. For EtherNet/IP, a multicast packet is set to TTL = 1.
This means that the first router will decrement the TTL parameter and discard when the
result is 0.

- If multicast routing is employed, multicast can propagate through routers.


To support this, the TTL parameter has to be larger than 1.

 Broadcast
- Used for one-to-all communications.
“All” means all in the subnet/VLAN.

- Can be either OSI layer 2 (e.g. ARP) or OSI layer 3 (e.g. AB_ETHIP driver.)
OSI layer 2 deals with Ethernet MAC addresses.
OSI layer 3 deals with IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.

Unicast Produce Tag


Since RSLogix5000 version 16, produce tag can be configured for unicast or multicast.
Previously, produce tag used multicast only.

If you have only a single tag consumer, you can use unicast. If you have 2 or more consumers,
multicast would be the best choice because it is more efficient.
Example:
Logix_1 produces tag1 to only Logix_2.
Logix_1 produces tag2 to only Logix_3
In this example Logix_1 produces multiple tags but each tag has only 1 consumer.
Unicast would be a good choice because each tag has only 1 consumer.

Unicast has the benefit of being simpler than multicast. When using multicast, the
recommendation is to configure IGMP. When there is no multicast in your system, you don’t
need to use IGMP.

Another benefit of unicast is that it can propagate thru routers because the TTL parameter is
64. This is important if your producer and consumer are on different subnets.

Important!!
Because routers can become busy, packet delivery may experience latency. The
recommendation is to select RPI values large enough to avoid:
- packet delivery in the wrong order at the consumer
- CIP connection timeouts

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Unicast, multicast, broadcast

Finally, with unicast you can have more than 32 tags. With multicast, you are limited to 32
produce tags through a single Ethernet module because our Ethernet modules have a multicast
address pool of 32 maximum.

Please note that for Rockwell EtherNet/IP I/O:


To be complete in this description, you should note that I/O from Rockwell Automation uses
multicast --- unicast is not available for I/O.

End of document…

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