Flooding (computer networking)

Flooding is used in computer network routing algorithms in which every incoming packet is sent through every outgoing link except the one it arrived on.

[1] Flooding is used in bridging and in systems such as Usenet and peer-to-peer file sharing and as part of some routing protocols, including OSPF, DVMRP, and those used in ad-hoc wireless networks (WANETs).

Algorithms may need to be more complex than this, since, in some case, precautions have to be taken to avoid wasted duplicate deliveries and infinite loops, and to allow messages to eventually expire from the system.

Duplicate packets may circulate forever, unless certain precautions are taken: In Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), flooding is used for transferring updates to the topology (LSAs).

In low data rate communications, flooding can achieve fast and robust data communications in dedicated protocols such as VEmesh,[3] which operates in the Sub-1 GHz frequency band and Bluetooth mesh networking, which operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency band.