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Internet Group Management Protocol

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Also known as IGMP

Primary protocol for establishing multicast group memberships on IPv4 networks. ICMPv6 is used for IPv6 networks.

Wikidata facts

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OSI Model layer location
network layer
Stack Exchange tag
stackoverflow.com/tags/igmp
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Encyclopedic overview

The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is a communications protocol used by hosts and adjacent routers on IPv4 networks to establish multicast group memberships. IGMP is an integral part of IP multicast and allows the network to direct multicast transmissions only to hosts that have requested them.

IGMP can be used for one-to-many networking applications such as online streaming video and gaming, and allows more efficient use of resources when supporting these types of applications.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Internet Group Management Protocol” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.