A broadcast address is a network address used to transmit to all devices connected to a multiple-access communications network. A message sent to a broadcast address may be received by all network-attached hosts.
In contrast, a multicast address is used to address a specific group of devices, and a unicast address is used to address a single device.
A network address is an identifier for a node or host on a telecommunications network. Network addresses are designed to be unique identifiers across the network, although some networks allow for local, private addresses, or locally administered addresses that may not be unique. Special network addresses are allocated as broadcast or multicast addresses. These too are not unique.
In some cases, network hosts may have more than one network address. For example, each network interface controller may be uniquely identified. Further, because protocols are frequently layered, more than one protocol's network address can occur in any particular network interface or node and more than one type of network address may be used in any one network.