According to TMC.net, content delivery methods affect the efficiency of bandwidth usage.
IP multicast is an efficient method that involves sending data once to clients who want to receive it, while broadcast wastes bandwidth because transmissions are sent to all clients. The article recommends that organizations considering using WLAN as part of a content delivery network ask potential vendors about whether their solutions are capable of addressing bandwidth inefficiencies.
“Such inefficiencies in the network management can include suboptimal reliability as the packet receipt acknowledgments are not send with broadcast traffic; automatic, lowest-common-denominator transmit speed to ensure fairness for older WiFi protocols still in the network; and unnecessary noise or interference in the environment.”
