| LAN switches are a natural bandwidth enhancement tool able to improve the performance of time-critical or bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications. |
| In order for multicast applications to work in the LAN, both switching and routing systems must support IP multicast capabilities. |
| As bandwidth enhancement and multicast are both critical, LAN switches must have sufficient internetworking intelligence to forward multicast traffic only to those workgroup segments that will use this traffic. Otherwise, multicast traffic will be indiscriminately broadcast to all workgroup segments, needlessly robbing network bandwidth from other users' applications. |