I am working on designing and writing some clustering software that involves one node sending out data to all nodes. To do this I am debating using either Broadcast or Multicast. My original idea was to have the master node just send out individual packets but the more I look into it the more I realize that it is way more efficient and scalable to use come sort of multihost transmission. In the network I have the master node sending out data and then the nodes responding back.
For sending out the data I figured that broadcast would be the easiest. However, broadcast has the downside of being very basic and potentially noisy. It can also be a great way to destroy a poorly designed network.
The other option is multicast. The problem with multicast is that it is much more complex. I don’t mind sitting down and learning the ends and outs but my concern is that the added complexity will end up backfiring.
I am leaning toward using broadcast as multicast seems like it is too complex for the scope of my project. Additionally, the broadcast domain could be limited by using a vlan that is limited to devices that need it.
Any thoughts?