What is one advantage of using multicast over unicast or broadcast?

Using multicast offers several advantages, and one significant benefit is that it minimizes network congestion. This is primarily because multicast allows a single data stream to be sent to multiple recipients, rather than sending separate copies of the same data to each recipient as in unicast.

In a unicast scenario, if several clients need to receive the same data, the sender has to create individual streams for each client, which can lead to a lot of duplicate traffic across the network. This can quickly overwhelm network resources, especially with large numbers of recipients, causing congestion.

Conversely, multicast sends the data on a single stream to a multicast address, and only those devices that have joined the multicast group will receive the data. This efficient use of bandwidth alleviates the strain on the network, maintaining better overall performance and enabling more effective communication, especially in scenarios like video streaming or live broadcasts where many users are accessing the same content simultaneously.

Other options do not accurately describe the primary benefits of multicast. For example, multicast does not guarantee delivery of packets, as this is typically a characteristic of unicast where acknowledgments can be managed more directly. Additionally, while multicast can help optimize bandwidth usage, saying it maximizes bandwidth availability is somewhat misleading; the goal is to use available