Computer Network Terms
Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) A protocol used by Internet hosts to report their multicast group memberships to any immediately neighboring multicast routers. It is required to be implemented by all hosts wishing to receive IP multicasts. IGMP messages are encapsulated in IP datagrams. Multicast protocols are important when you are trying to reduce or limit broadcast traffic on network. Multicast protocols also come into play if someone is trying to run broadcast video training over the network to specific students distributed across a multi-segment network. Instead of the video stream being broadcast to everyone, the video stream is only addressed to particular PCs. Internet The Internet is a worldwide network composed of government, academic, commercial, military and corporate networks spanning the world. The Internet was originally developed for the U.S. military and then became widely used for academic and commercial research. Users acce