- Today we're going to be talking about the various internet message types, or I

Pv4 message types. Kind of an overview of it. Machines talk to one another, and
to put it in human terms, I always think about it this way. If you watch late-ni
ght television, an example of one of the message types is a host will come out,
and typically will start the show by just speaking out to the audience, called a
monologue. You might think, "Who's he talking to?" Well, he's talking to everyb
ody in the audience.
He's pretty much broadcasting his voice everywhere and the entire audience is li
stening. That would be considered one of the IPv4 message types, that of broadca
st. Maybe a good way to think about it is in order for there to be a recipient-In fact, we can start out with an example. Let's say that somebody walked into
this room right now and said, "Hey, there's a car out in the parking lot "it's a
blue Chevy Nova, and your headlights are on." Well, the person who just came th
rough the door and said that, who are they talking to? They're talking to everyb
ody in the room, but not everybody in the room cares.
In other words, you kind of cycle up through your OSI model that's inside your b
ody and say cycle ups like, "Well, I don't drive a blue Chevy Nova, "so, I disca
rd that message." And it may be that nobody in the room drives a blue Chevy Nova
with the headlights on, but each of us process that up until the point where we
're like, "That poor slob, "I'm glad it's not me. "They're going to have a dead
battery "at the end of the day." But that's another example of what would be con
sidered a broadcast message. And you may have had some exposure to like the math
ematical definition of a broadcast message.
In fact, if you go back to the network definition of a broadcast, that's where y
ou take the network portion-- In fact, we can actually write it here. Let's say
I have some address, 10.1, and the rest I'm not going to put anything there for
now. But let's say that the mask for this is 255.255.0.0. Well that means that w
hatever's here, and here, are host. This portion of the IP address belongs to th
e host.
Well the definition, if you read a networking book about what is the definition
of a broadcast address. That's where you take all your host bits, all of them, a
nd set them to ones in binary. And if these are-- Keep in mind that this is real
ly eight bits, and this is really eight bits. If I have eight ones here, and eig
ht ones here, those are 255s, right? So let's fill in numbers, so I'm going to p
ut a 255 here, and a 255 here. So if I have, if I am some PC in this network. Le
t's say I'm a PC sitting right here, and I actually have an address of 10.1.0.10
0, with the same mask.
And I generate a broadcast message. I'm sending out a message 10.1.255.255, in o
ther words I'm talking to everybody on my segment, and everybody on my hallway s
o to speak. That broadcast message then is processed by everybody who is listeni
ng and live on that network. That's a broadcast. What about another type of mess
age you think about is called-- I'll write this down, this is broadcast. A secon
d type is what's called unicast.
Unicast is, again if we go back to our example of the late-night show host comin
g out, having his monologue. But then perhaps, somebody yells out to him, "Hey,
how you doing, I'm from Chicago..." whatever the message is. So they turn their
attention to that person and those two have a direct conversation. That would be
considered more of a unicast. Like for instance you have, PC A exchanging a fil
e with PC B. They are having a conversation. Now, they could be on this network
segment where there's other hosts.
But if they're having a unicast conversation these two are talking, it's kind of
like that phrase, "This 'tween me and you." Nobody else needs to concern themse
lves with it. So that would be a unicast. In other words, if I'm sending somethi

ng to you I'm sending it directly to your IP address, you're sending it directly

to my IP address, we have a conversation. That would be the second type, unicas
t. The third type that we're going to discuss is called multicast. Now, you may
have some experience with multicast if you are the network admin.
And perhaps part of your job is deploying images to large groups of machines. It
's definitely faster to deploy a single image to multiple machines at the same t
ime, than going around and configuring individual machines one at a time. So, th
is is the idea of multicast. Maybe you're using some software, Acronis, Altiris,
Ghost, Windows Deployment, there are various methodologies to use this multicas
t. In reality, what it really means is there is a smaller sub-group inside the l
arger group that is participating in this stream.
Perhaps another way to think about it would be if you have a large company and o
nly your people that have something to do with accounting have to watch some vid
eo about accounting, continuing education. Well, they inside your company would
be participating in this stream, this multicast stream, where only their compute
rs are watching it, and everybody else is, "Well, I don't have to worry about th
at accounting video, "that's not my job." Or if you are deploying a new image to
your machine.
Let's say that everybody upgrades to Windows 7 from Windows XP, or something lik
e that. Well, you're deploying out that new Windows 7 image, maybe just to this
department first, and this department. So that would be multicast. In fact the w
ay I like to think about it is if you've ever been to a big arena size show, whe
re a lot of times they try to get the crowd involved. The guy will come out and
he's like, "Alright everybody! How you doing tonight?!" And typically he has to
check the back of his guitar to figure out which city he's in. But nevertheless,
"Hey, how you doing tonight in Pheonix?!" Because I'm in Pheonix now.
"How you doing tonight in Pheonix?!" He's yelling that out to everybody. He says
, "Now, here's what we're going to do. "I can't let the people that are over her
e "be louder than the people that are over here. "I want these people to scream
and yell." So what he'll do is he'll say, "OK, here's what I'm going to do. "I'm
going to come to this side, "I'm going to raise my fist in the air, "and when I
raise my fist in the air, "I want this side of the audience "to scream and yell
"and make as much noise as you possibly can." Then he'll come over to this side
. "When I raise my fist in the air, "I want you to make as much noise as you pos
sibly can "because we can't let, of course, "that side be louder than this side.
" So, that's multicast.
Keep in mind, everybody in the audience can hear, but I'm directing my attention
first of all to just this small sub-group of the whole, and then when I'm over
here, I'm adjusting my attention to this other small sub-group of the whole. And
that's this third type, multicast. And all three of them play a part in your ro
le as the network admin. So understanding them is very important.