Pharmaceutical Industry Overview

Internet Protocol multicast delivers UDP packets (data) to multiple receivers that have previously joined a multicast group, by efficiently routing and duplicating data at specific routers (chosen algorithmically depending on the particular scheme) that identify more than one receiver downstream in their tree. Receivers are arranged within a group, which is represented by an address, and anyone on the network can send data to that group address in order to send data to all of its members. Multicast is designed so that neither the sender nor any of the receivers take on the extra burden of making copies of the data; rather, the data is routed and duplicated at the router level, which makes it an extremely efficient form of data distribution from a source to many destinations. Multicast therefore is useful in a number of Internet applications, including video and audio conferencing, distance learning, distribution of software, stocks and quotes, and news.