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Networking Fundamentals · Foundational

Broadcast Address

The last address in an IPv4 subnet, with all host bits set to 1, used to send a packet to all hosts on that subnet.

Definition

Packets sent to a subnet's broadcast address are delivered to every host on that subnet and mapped to the Ethernet broadcast MAC ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff. It cannot be assigned to a host. IPv6 has no broadcast and uses multicast instead.

Example

The broadcast address for 10.1.1.0/27 is 10.1.1.31.

Exam tip

Broadcast address = next subnet's network address minus 1.

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