Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)
The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is a communications protocol used by IPv4 devices to manage membership in multicast groups on a network. Introduced in the early 1990s, IGMP enables hosts to report their multicast group memberships to neighboring multicast routers and to receive multicast data streams only for the groups to which they belong. IGMP operates between hosts and multicast routers, facilitating the efficient distribution of multicast traffic within a network. Hosts use IGMP messages to join multicast groups, leave groups, and query for group membership information. Multicast routers, in turn, use IGMP to track group membership and control the forwarding of multicast traffic. IGMP plays a crucial role in supporting multicast communication applications such as video streaming, online gaming, and audio conferencing on IPv4 networks. s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Group_Management_Protocol