What Is Unicasting?

Date First Published: 30th May 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Data Transmission Technologies

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

CONTENTS

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Unicasting

Learn more about what unicasting in this article.

Unicasting is the sending of data across a network to a single recipient or host on a network. Unlike, broadcasting or multicasting, it has only one sender or recipient and is a simpler one-to-one type of communication. An example of a unicast is a transmission of a document with a single user over the internet. The term 'casting' means to send data over a network. When an individual user needs to get quick video messaging, unicasting would be the recommended method.

Note:

Unicasting is used all the time. For example, every time a user visits a webpage, the web server was the sender and the computer was the receiver. The user is making a request to the web server to download the webpage into their web browser.

In unicast communication, data can be sent in three ways, including simplex, half-duplex, and full-duplex.

In the simplex mode of communication, only one node can send data and another node can receive it at a time. One signal is transmitted that always goes in exactly the same direction.
In the half-duplex mode of communication, both nodes can send and receive data and it can move in both directions, but not at the same time.
In the full-duplex mode of communication, both nodes can send and receive data and it can move in both directions at the same time.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Unicasting

The advantages of unicasting are:

It is the simplest way of transmitting data between two devices. All that is required is two devices with an internet connection that are capable of sending and receiving data.
There is little latency and the bandwidth is relatively high, since there are only two connected devices and no possibility of additional devices slowing the transmission process down.
It is easy to troubleshoot. If there is a problem with one of the devices, it will be very easy to identify which device is experiencing the problem as there are only two devices.

The disadvantages of unicasting are:

It is very limited. Even though there are some situations where unicasting is suitable, most networks have more than two users. When there is a larger audience, multicasting or broadcasting is recommended.
There are only two hosts. If one host fails or disconnects, it is impossible for data to be transferred across the network.