In a network, flooding is the forwarding by a router of a packet from any node to every other node attached to the router except the node from which the packet arrived. Flooding is a way to distribute routing information updates quickly to every node in a large network. It is also sometimes used in multicast packets (from one source node to many specific nodes in a real or virtual network).
The Internet's Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol, which updates router information in a network, uses flooding.
This was last updated in September 1999