I don't know exactly in which context ur asking regarding flooding and broadcast, is it in wired or wireless networks. is it ad hoc or infrastructure based network. However, i ll generalize the answer, but it might bit more specific to wireless networks.

Broadcast is one of the communication techniques, where all nodes receiver the transmitted msg. Whereas, flooding is a special case of broadcast, where each node that has received the broadcast will "Re-broadcast" that received msg. This keeps going on and on, hence termed as "flooding", i.e. to flood the network with msgs.

Bottom line: flooding is a broadcast case, with the scenario of all the nodes re-broadcasting the received broadcast msgs.

Hope this helps...it might be bit tricky to digest at the beginning but i m sure u ll get it.

Flooding - happens when switch tries to learn MAC address, where switch sends frames to all except from the port it received

Broadcast - happens even though switch has learnt the MAC address; however they are sent only to specific broadcast domain.

I don't know exactly in which context ur asking regarding flooding and broadcast, is it in wired or wireless networks. is it ad hoc or infrastructure based network. However, i ll generalize the answer, but it might bit more specific to wireless networks.

Broadcast is one of the communication techniques, where all nodes receiver the transmitted msg. Whereas, flooding is a special case of broadcast, where each node that has received the broadcast will "Re-broadcast" that received msg. This keeps going on and on, hence termed as "flooding", i.e. to flood the network with msgs.

Bottom line: flooding is a broadcast case, with the scenario of all the nodes re-broadcasting the received broadcast msgs.

Hope this helps...it might be bit tricky to digest at the beginning but i m sure u ll get it.

Thanks for reply. My question is in context of MANET(mobile adhoc network). Actually when I am searching on flooding, it gives more on information on broadcasting and while reading those stuff its not giving me clear idea about it. So Is there any concrete way to distinguish these terms?

Flooding is one of the ways to implement broadcasting, but it's not the only way. I have a few publications of using gossiping for broadcasting. Also, if you consider duty-cycling, the problem can be more interesting (also see some of my recent pubs).

My answer suites well for case of MANETs....and as i said in the "Bottom Line" part, flooding means that ALL nodes will keep on "RE-broadcasting" the msgs received through a "Broadcast".

Good Luck...

I think Flooding is multi hope communication and Broadcasting is point to point. In that case whatever Prof. Osama Rehman said that is correct.

@ Arjav, thanks for the compliment, but i m not a full Prof. "YET".....