Difference b/w flooding and Broadcasting

Hi all,

Any one can tell the exact difference between Flooding and Broadcasting.

Flooding is typically sending a package multiple times towards a host (sometimes for DoS attacks.)

Broadcast is a package sent towards all hosts able to receive the package (there are multiple types of b.casts)

flooding:
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.





broadcasting:
In computer networking, broadcasting refers to transmitting a packet that will be received (conceptually) by every device on the network. In practice, the scope of the broadcast is limited to a broadcast domain.

As you can see, there are multiple definitions depending on context. I typically relate flooding to a switched network, where a frame is flooded out all ports if a switch does not have knowledge of the destination MAC.