In computer networking, a broadcast address is an IP address that allows information to be sent to all machines on a given subnet rather than a specific machine. The exact notation can vary by operating system, but the standard is laid out in Request for Comments 919.

Generally, the broadcast address is found by taking the logical bit complement of the subnet mask and then logically Logical_disjunctioning this with the IP address.

Example: to broadcast a packet to an entire Classful_network subnet using a private IP address space, the broadcast address would be 172.16.255.255.

This can be found from the subnet mask (255.255.0.0) and the IP address (eg. 172.16.48.196 - the complement of the subnet mask is 0.0.255.255, and 172.16.48.196 || 0.0.255.255 = 172.16.255.255.

A special type of IP address is the limited broadcast address 255.255.255.255. A broadcast involves delivering a message from one sender to many recipients. This broadcast is limited in that it does not reach every node on the Internet, only nodes on the LAN.

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