As regards to communication within a computer network, what do you understand by the following terms: point to point and broadcast

​Point – to - point 

​a dedicated line of communication if first established before communication can take place

In telecommunications, a point-to-point connection refers to a communications connection between two communication endpoints or nodes.

An example is a telephone call, in which one telephone is connected with one other, and what is said by one caller can only be heard by the other.

This is contrasted with a point-to-multipoint or broadcast connection, in which many nodes can receive information transmitted by one node.

Other examples of point-to-point communications links are leased lines and microwave radio relay. ~ Wikipedia

A shared LAN such as Ethernet provides a form of point-to-point communications. Keep in mind that on shared LANs, all nodes listen to signals on the cable, so broadcasting is supported.

However, when one node addresses frames to another node and only that node receives the frames, one could say that the two nodes are engaged in point-to-point communications across a shared medium.

Point-to-multipoint connections are possible over multidrop links. A mainframe and its terminals is an example.

​The device that provides the multipoint connection is usually an intelligent controller that manages the flow of information from the multiple devices attached to it.

Point-to-point communications is defined in the physical and data link layers of the OSI protocol stack.

​Broadcast

​information is sent any device on the network can receive it e.g. Hub

In computer networking, telecommunication and information theory, broadcasting is a method of transferring a message to all recipients simultaneously.

Broadcasting can be performed as a high-level operation in a program, for example, broadcasting in Message Passing Interface, or it may be a low-level networking operation, for example broadcasting on Ethernet.

All-to-all communication is a computer communication method in which each sender transmits messages to all receivers within a group.

​In networking this can be accomplished using broadcast or multicast. This is in contrast with the point-to-point method in which each sender communicates with one receiver.~ Wikipedia

Broadcast Communication

Related Searches on Introduction to Networking and Data Communication, Form 4 Level

more