Networking.com

flooding (network)

By Katie Terrell Hanna

What is network flooding?

In a computer network, flooding occurs when a router uses a nonadaptive routing algorithm to send an incoming packet to every outgoing link except the node on which the packet arrived.

Flooding is a way to distribute routing protocols updates quickly to every node in a large network. Examples of these protocols include the Open Shortest Path First and Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol. 

Network flooding also has some other uses, including the following:

How do flooding algorithms work?

In computer science, flooding algorithms can be configured in one of two ways:

Either way, the end result is that the flooded information eventually reaches all nodes within the network.

What are the different types of network flooding?

Network flooding can occur in one of three ways, controlled flooding, uncontrolled flooding and selective flooding.

The downfalls of network flooding

While network flooding is simple to implement, it can have a number of drawbacks. For example, network flooding can waste network traffic bandwidth if information packets are sent needlessly to all IP addresses when only a few require the information.

Furthermore, cybercriminals can use flooding in denial of service (DoS) attacks to cause a service timeout or to disrupt a computer network.

Network administrators can prevent flooding attacks and connectivity issues caused by uncontrolled flooding with a few best practices:

18 Jun 2021

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