What is a Broadcast Address
A broadcast address is an IP address that can target all systems on a specific subnet instead of single hosts.
There are two ways in which a broadcast address can be defined:
- Zeros-broadcasts:
- In this the host area of the IP address while displayed using binary values is filled with zeros instead of ones.
- Ones-broadcasts:
- In this the host area of the IP address while displayed using binary values is filled with ones instead of zeros.
- Log into the windows system with administrator privileges
- Open the registry editor via Start >> run >> (Type ‘regedit’) >> Click enter
- Navigate to the registry key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\
Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\[Adapter ID]“ - Replace [Adapter ID] with the actual adapter ID for which the broadcast address is to be changed
- The list of all the adapter IDs in the windows system can be found by opening a command line prompt, and executing a “ipconfig /all” command
- Create a new DWORD value called “UseZeroBroadcast”. Set its initial value to “1″
- Reboot the server for the changes to take effect
- Now the zeros-broadcast has enabled for the adapter
Steps to change the Windows server’s Broadcast Addresses:
The broadcast address cannot be changed by hand in Windows server. However, it can be chosen whether the system uses zeros-broadcasts or ones-broadcasts.
The following procedure can be used in order to change a windows system to use zeros-broadcasts:
Loading ...