Named multicast address

Question

Is it possible to name a multicast or broadcast address? Usually for a single machine I'd put a line in /etc/hosts. Will that work for a multicast address?

Answer 1

I don't see why not - of course it largely depends on the application that is trying to join the multicast group and whether it will allow you to specify a hostname, but in principle it should work fine. We have multicast video stream addresses in DNS and (e.g.) VLC's Open Network Stream will let me specify a name instead of the IP to join.

Same goes for broadcast addresses - the local host will not be aware whether a remote address is broadcast or not unless it is on the same subnet, so it has no local grounds to stop you resolving names to it.