Multicasting - Advantages and Disadvantages

 In this section, We will discuss about Multicast, advantages and disadvantages. Till now we have seen what is multicasting and what are the benefits of  using multicasting in network.

Now let’s start with Multicast advantages -

Multicast Advantages:

Available network bandwidth is utilized more efficiently since single stream of data are replaced with a multiple streams locally by using multicast. It will increase the productivity. Below you can see the graph. This will help you to analyse the benefit for Multicast over Unicast.

 Let’s see multicast Disadvantages -

Multicast Disadvantages

Multicast is UDP-based

  Best-effort delivery: Drops are to be expected. Multicast application must not expect reliable delivery of data and should be designed accordingly. Reliable multicast applications will address this issue.

  No congestion avoidance: The lack of the TCP windowing and "slow-start" mechanisms can result in network congestion. If possible, multicast applications should attempt to detect and avoid congestion conditions.

  Duplicates: some multicast protocol mechanisms result in the occasional generation of duplicate packets. Multicast applications should be designed to expect occasional duplicate packets.

  Out-of-sequence delivery: Network topology changes affect the order of delivery -- the application must properly address the issue.

Now we completed, Multicast advantages and disadvantages. It will help you to decide, will it be beneficial for your company/requirements.

For my opinion -

Multicasting is more efficient means, delivering of content where a single sender needs to deliver the content to multiple receivers. This task may be achieved through the use of multicast groups.

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